PSSI: SIM card phone book listing (part 2)

Just a week after my post about a missing SIM card explorer in free software I discover in a the French MISC magazine article "Python Simple Smartcard Interpreter" that such a project exists.


PSSI: Python Simple Smartcard Interpreter


The project is hosted at http://code.google.com/p/pssi/ and uses GNU GPLv3 licence.
" Python script that provides an abstract layer for smartcard reading. Thanks to it, it is possible to read a smartcard by simply adding its structure in the form of a plugin, without taking care of the communication layer. The tool comes with several plugins, namely SIM, EMV, and NAVIGO. "
The project is quiet new. The project was created 30 July 2010 on code.google.com and the first commit occured on 19 Sept 2010. No stable/numbered release is available.

Plugins


The software is not just for SIM cards but is generic and uses plugins.

SIM

This plugin displays a lot of information about the SIM:
  • Telecom provider
  • Phone book
  • SMS

EMV

This plugin also displays a lot of information about the bank card:

Applications on the card



 ATR                         : 3B 65 00 00 66 04 6C 90 00
 Content                    
    Applications List          
       ====   1   ====
          ====   1   ====
             Application information    
                EMV Application information
                   Application ID              : a0 00 00 00 42 10 10 
                   Application name            : CB
                   Application priority        : 1
          ====   2   ====
             Application information    
                EMV Application information
                   Application ID              : a0 00 00 00 03 10 10 
                   Application name            : VISA
                   Application priority        : 2

Card holder name


Application information    
   Track 2 data                : 49 78 38 00 XX XX XX XX YY YY YY YY 
   Cardholder                  : MR ROUSSEAU LUDOVIC       
   Track 1 discretionary data  : 329627000000000673000000

Card validity dates and card number


Application information    
   Validity beginning          : 01 / 09 / 08
   Validity end                : 30 / 09 / 10
   Card number                 : 49 78 38 00 XX XX XX XX 
   PAN sequence number         : 4

The card number has been obscured by me. Even if the card expired a few months ago I think it is safer like this :-)

Transactions


====   1   ====
====   2   ====
   Amount          : 126.63          ()
   CID             : 64              (Cryptogram Information Data)
   Country         : FRANCE          (Country where the terminal is located)
   Currency        : Euro            ()
   Date            : 18 / 09 / 10    ()
   Type            : Payment         ()
====   3   ====
   Amount          : 36.80           ()
   CID             : 64              (Cryptogram Information Data)
   Country         : FRANCE          (Country where the terminal is located)
   Currency        : Euro            ()
   Date            : 31 / 08 / 10    ()
   Type            : Payment         ()
====   4   ====
   Amount          : 202.60          ()
   CID             : 64              (Cryptogram Information Data)
   Country         : FRANCE          (Country where the terminal is located)
   Currency        : Euro            ()
   Date            : 25 / 08 / 10    ()
   Type            : Payment         ()


NAVIGO

Navigo is the smart card used by the RATP in Paris public transport system. I do not have such a card so could not use this plugin.

ccid-utils

Another project to dump an EMV card is ccid-utils but this project did not work with my French bank card so I thought my card was not EMV compliant. But I was wrong since PSSI works great with this card.

Another problem with ccid-utils is that even if the program uses Python the core of the project uses C and directly talks to a CCID reader instead of using the PC/SC API through Pyscard. ccid-utils is also very limited regarding the CCID readers it supports.

Conclusion

PSSI is much more than a SIM card explorer. It also works for EMV and Navigo cards. The display of information is nice. The code is Python only so I had no problem using it on Mac OS X. I think I will continue playing with the software and maybe implement other features.