The Vault, an Architecture for Smartcards to Gain Infinite Memory

Abstract

Smartcard chips vendors have always done their best to embed more memory inside cards. These efforts are driven to allow their customers – smartcard manufacturers – to mask more software inside cards (in ROM) but, above all, to help them to provide cards with more memory dedicated to the application (EEPROM). Even if the geometry is getting smaller and smaller, some applications do not match with the current memory limitations due to smartcard constraints making impossible for the chips to be more than just a few millimeter square. The goal of the Extended Memory Card project is to suggest an architecture in which smartcards can securely ”contain” more data than their own memory allows it. The card acts as a key to access information stored outside of it.