PCSCCheck, the all-in-one tool to validate and tune your PC/SC installation

An analysis of the questions that are the most frequently asked to our technical support shows that many issues and concerns are due to the settings or the behaviour of Windows operating system itself.

This is particularly the case in security-enforced corporate environments, where strict administrative policies may prevent the user to install the right driver, or even prevent the applications to access local smart card readers.

The fact that Windows raises a couple of notifications (“Setting up a device”, then “The smart card requires drivers that are not present on this system”) every time a card is inserted in a PC/SC reader for the first time is also the source of many questions, that this article will address.

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PC/SC on Linux and Mac OS X with Mono

One the goals of the Mono project is to make Microsoft .NET applications runnable on Unix systems. Using Mono, it is therefore now possible to maintain a single C#/.NET code base, that runs on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

In this context, SpringCard’s PC/SC SDK (https://www.springcard.com/en/download/find/file/pcsc-sdk) has been updated, so that it now enables developers to write PC/SC applications in C#/.NET, that can execute on Windows, as well as on Linux and Mac OS X platforms.

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SCardSniffer spies the exchanges between a PC/SC application and PC/SC middleware

SCardSniffer is a new tool used to spy the exchanges between Windows applications and the smart cards or NFC tags that are accessed through a PC/SC reader (or coupler).

SCardSniffer
SCardSniffer main window

On a Windows computer, all card-aware applications communicate with smart cards or NFC tags through the system’s PC/SC library, winscard.dll.

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SpringCard PC/SC solution for Android has been released

SpringCard R&D team is proud to release a simple software solution to add support for SpringCard USB PC/SC Couplers to Android tablets (or smartphone). The software is made of two parts: SpringCard PC/SC Service for Android, a freeware application that installs directly from Google Play SpringCard PC/SC Library for Android, an open-source library that makes … Read more

scpcsc_feed completes MultiConf

scpcsc_feed is a command-line utility for Windows which is a companion-tool for MultiConf in case you need to configure numerous SpringCard PC/SC couplers in batch mode, or change the settings quickly without a needing a full-featured GUI. scpcsc_feed is available at https://files.springcard.com/pub/scpcsc_cfg.zip. Just unzip the archive in the folder you want, and open a command … Read more

New firmware for all SpringCard PC/SC couplers based on the H663 core

SpringCard has just released a new firmware version, tagged 2.00, for its H663 core. The H663 core is a versatile contactless+contact module, which supports virtually all proximity/RFID HF chip cards (ISO 14443 & ISO 15693 standards, including Mifare, Calypso, etc), NFC-enabled mobile phones or other objects (ISO 18092, peer-to-peer in initiator mode, passive communication scheme), … Read more