Android Smart Card Emulator¶

The Android Smart Card Emulator allows the emulation of a contact-less smart card. The emulator uses Android’s HCE to fetch APDUs from a contact-less reader. The app allows to process the Command APDUs either by delegating them to a remote virtual smart card or by a built-in Java Card simulator. The response APDUs are then returned to the smart card reader.

With the built-in Java Card runtime of jCardSim [1] the app includes the following Applets:

• Hello World Applet [2] (application identifier F000000001)
• OpenPGP Applet [3] (application identifier D2760001240102000000000000010000)
• OATH Applet [4] (application identifier A000000527210101)
• ISO Applet [5] (application identifier F276A288BCFBA69D34F31001)
• GIDS Applet [6] (application identifier A000000397425446590201)

The remote interface can be used together with the Virtual Smart Card, which allows emulating the following cards:

• Generic ISO-7816 smart card
• German electronic identity card (nPA)
• Electronic passport

You may also attach your own simulation to the remote interface by implementing a simple interface through a socket communication.

The Android Smart Card Emulator has the following dependencies:

• NFC hardware built into the smartphone for HCE
• Android 4.4 “KitKat” (or newer) or CyanogenMod 11 (or newer)
• permissions for a data connection (communication with Virtual Smart Card) and for using NFC (communication to the reader); scanning the configuration via QR code requires permission to access the camera
• Virtual Smart Card installed on the host computer for using the remote interface

For emulating a contact-less smart card with a desktop or notebook, have a look at PC/SC Relay.

Please note that the currently emulated applets are verifying the PIN by transmitting it without any protection between card and terminal. You may want to have a look at Erik Nellesson’s Virtual Keycard [7], which uses the PACE protocol for PIN verification.

Download and Install¶

The Android Smart Card Emulator is available on F-Droid [8].

To manually compile the app you need to fetch the sources and initialize the submodules:

git clone https://github.com/frankmorgner/vsmartcard.git
cd vsmartcard
# fetch the applets that are in the submodules
git submodule init
git submodule update

We use Android Studio [9] to build and deploy the application. Use File ‣ Open to select vsmartcard/ACardEmulator. Attach your smartphone and choose Run ‣ Run ‘app’.