opensc

Smart Card Utilities

OpenSC provides a set of utilities to access smart cards. It mainly focuses on cards that support cryptographic operations. It facilitates their use in security applications such as mail encryption, authentication, and digital signature. OpenSC implements the PKCS#11 API. Applications supporting this API, such as Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird, can use it. OpenSC implements the PKCS#15 standard and aims to be compatible with every software that does so, too. Before purchasing any cards, please read carefully documentation on the web pageonly some cards are supported. Not only card type matters, but also card version, card OS version and preloaded applet. Only subset of possible operations may be supported for your card. Card initialization may require third party proprietary software.