My activities related to smart card and Free Software (as in free speech).
Now that I have moved my blog from Blogspot to my own server (see Blog moved to https://blog.apdu.fr/ ) I am now able to analyse the web server logs for https://ccid.apdu.fr/ . I used the logs from June 2026. The server received a total of 269,860 requests. This equates to 8,995 requests per day, or 6.2 requests per minute. This is a very small website. All requests I used the user_agents Python…
Current status Some Dell laptops have a Broadcom smart card reader. Some readers are for contact cards and some are for contactless cards. Contact readers should work fine with my CCID driver and are listed in the Should work but untested by me list. However, none of the contactless readers are supported by my driver and are in the Unsupported or partly supported CCID readers . Example with a Dell…
I have just released version 1.8.2 of libccid the Free Software CCID class smart card reader driver. This version resolves an issue that was introduced in version 1.8.1, which was released three days ago. Composite devices (devices with both a CCID interface and also another interface, such as HID) were not being handled correctly. Yubico Yubikey tokens, for example, are often composite devices.…
I just released version 1.8.1 of libccid the Free Software CCID class smart card reader driver. This version fixes an issue with multi-slots readers. Changes: 1.8.1 - 10 June 2026, Ludovic Rousseau Correctly close the slots of a multi-slots reader Fix 3 minor issues "Found by AISLE in partnership with Red Hat" Some other minor improvements
I have just released a new version of pcsc-lite 2.5.1 . pcsc-lite is a Free Software implementation of the PC/SC (also known as WinSCard) API for Unix systems. It provides an API for using smart cards and smart card readers. This version contains a bug fix for multi-slots readers. The bug was introduced in the previous version 2.5.0 released 2 weeks ago. Changes: 2.5.1: Ludovic Rousseau 10 June…
I just released a new version of pcsc-tools , a suite of tools for PC/SC. Changes: 1.7.5 - 3 June 2026, Ludovic ROUSSEAU 102 new ATRs pcsc_scan: fix an infinite loop do not crash if SCardEstablishContext() fails do not wait for an non-started thread handle the case of an error during SCardGetStatusChange meson: use -DATRparser="" to disable the ATR parser gscriptor: Add Georgian translation minor…
pcsc-lite and my CCID driver are no longer limited to 16 readers. See New version of pcsc-lite: 2.5.0 and New version of libccid: 1.8.0 . History Since the first version of pcsc-lite (in 2002 according to git history) the maximum number of readers has been set to 16. This number is defined by the PCSCLITE_MAX_READERS_CONTEXTS constant. Since pcsc-lite was limited to 16 readers it was obvious to…
I have just released a new version of pcsc-lite 2.5.0 . pcsc-lite is a Free Software implementation of the PC/SC (also known as WinSCard) API for Unix systems. It provides an API for using smart cards and smart card readers. The major change in this version is: no more limited to 16 smart card readers. Changes: 2.5.0: Ludovic Rousseau 27 May 2026 Do not limit to 16 readers only Remove support of…
I just released version 1.8.0 of libccid the Free Software CCID class smart card reader driver. The major changes in this version are: no more limited to 16 smart card readers ./configure script is no more provided. Only meson configuration is provided. Changes: 1.8.0 - 27 May 2026, Ludovic Rousseau Add support of GLSolutions NM61 PC/SC Identiv uTrust FIDO2 Security Key Kensington VeriMark NFC+…
Which smart card reader is present in a particular laptop model? It can be difficult to find out the exact model of smart card reader included in a laptop before buying it. However, thanks to the Hardware for Linux project, you can submit your own hardware configuration and also consult the configurations of many laptops and desktops to find out what hardware is included. The website also provides…
Version 1.7.4 of pcsc-tools provides an enhanced version of the pcsc_scan tool. Problem The program waits for card and reader events and reports any smart card events. If no reader or card is inserted or removed, nothing happens. Since version 1.6.0 ( New version of pcsc-tools: 1.6.0 ) the program has included an animation (cycling \|/- characters) to indicate that it is waiting. However, this was…