CODEWITHSUNDEEP
nfcsmartcardjavacardcontactless-smartcard
Ebrahim Ghasemi
Ebrahim Ghasemi

Reputation: 6126

How to communicate with Felica memory/smart cards?

I have a Felica card. The first question is what actually is this card? Is it a Smart Card or it is a simple memory card? Is it a kind of Java Card and can I load .cap files inside or it has its proprietary fixed contents and I can't load any applet? Is it GlobalPlatform standard complaint?

I read here that:

Sony’s proprietary FeliCa is a smartcard technology that is similar to ISO/IEC 14443. FeliCa has a file system similar to that defined in ISO/IEC 7816-4. The file system and commands for access to the file system are standardized in JIS X 6319-4 [28]. In addition, the FeliCa system has proprietary cryptography and security features.

After that I tried to send some APDU commands to it. The first step was do some configuration changes with the reader. Because my reader is configured to read ISO14443 Type A and Type B cards and not Felica cards.

As both Felica and ISO/IEC 14443 cards use 13.56 MHz frequency for the carrier, I think the difference between these types is in the Protocol layer only. Am I right? If so, what is the name of Felica cards transmission protocol? (For ISO/IEC 14443 cards, we have T=1 and T=CL protocols).

After configuring the reader, I tried to send commands to card:

Connect successful.
Send: 00 A4 04 00 00
Recv: 6A 81
Time used: 31.000 ms

Send: 00 C0 00 00 00
Recv: 6A 81
Time used: 28.000 ms

Send: 00 CA 00 00 00
Recv: 6A 81
Time used: 35.000 ms

As you see above, I receive 0x6A81 status words only.

I also searched a lot of ACS Reader Datasheets, Some NXP Application notes and for sure JIS X 6319-4 standard for a list of commands for this type of cards. But I found nothing applicable.

So, the questions are:

  1. What actually is Felica? (Smart? Memory?)
  2. What is the difference between Felica cards and ISO/IEC14443 cards? Is it related to NFC?
  3. How to communicate with this card and transfer data?

Update:

My card'S ATR is : 3b 8f 80 01 80 4f 0c a0 00 00 03 06 11 00 3b 00 00 00 00 42

Upvotes: 3

Views: 3321

Answers (1)

Maarten Bodewes
Maarten Bodewes

Reputation: 94058

What actually is Felica? (Smart? Memory?)

It's more like a memory card than a smart card with regards to functionality. Reading data in blocks is typical for a memory card and the card has very limited functionality besides basic authentication based on symmetric cryptography.

You could argue that it is a smart card in the sense that the implementation seems to carry a multi-purpose CPU (see Annex B).

It seems however impossible to change the behavior of the smart card the same way you'd do e.g. in a Global Platform Java Card. So I'd classify it as a memory card with a proprietary protocol.

What is the difference between Felica cards and ISO/IEC14443 cards? Is it related to NFC?

It uses a proprietary communication protocol which includes both the data -link layer (which you are asking about here) and the command/response layer.

How to communicate with this card and transfer data?

The fact that you are sending APDU's instead of FeliCa's proprietary command / response pairs indicate that you are using a translation layer. This translation layer is likely to be in the reader / reader driver. The API of this translation layer is likely to be specified in the PCSC 2.01 specifications (section 3.2.2.1 Storage Card Functionality Support, using CLA byte 0xFF).

You probably need the reader's user manual as well, if just to figure out in which location to store the required keys.

Upvotes: 5

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