4 expanded posts ยท every known parent and child
>I suppose this is some metamorphicly generated checksum. Until someone >gets ahold of one of these OMNI cards and takes it apart... We use SecurID cards, which sound very similar, as a security measure on some of our remote access connections. BTW, you can't take the cards apart. They fry themselves if you try. -- Lefty (lefty@apple.com) C:.M:.C:., D:.O:.D:.
BTW, you can't take the cards apart. They fry themselves if you try. Uhh. Well, not exactly. The cards don't fry, but presumably the *key* inside them does. I've seen a SecurID card which had been pried apart; when you put the two halves back together, the LED went on again, apparantly into some "initialization mode". One assumes that the internal key had apparantly been fried; it was, however, apparantly possible to reinitialize the card with a new key. This may not defeat their security, but it may make it possible to recycle their old cards instead of buying new ones.. - Bill
lefty@apple.com might have said: >> BTW, you can't take the cards apart. They fry themselves if you try. sommerfeld@orchard.medford.ma.us might have replied: >I've seen a SecurID card which had been pried apart; when you put the >two halves back together, the LED went on again, apparantly into some >"initialization mode". If you looked inside, perhaps you saw where the switches are? I've been told that the SecurId cards have two membrane-style switches on the face (not actually marked though.) The initial key is programmed by keying it in through those switches; the "protocol" ends with a command to "ignore any further input from these switches"... Early ones were hand-keyed, they then went to a robot mechanism, and now apparently there is a device which takes a hopper full of cards and keys them in in parallel batches (something like 20 at a time for the machine I heard about a year ago.) This is all stories I heard (as far as I know, second hand from SecurID people) but it would be interesting to confirm the existance of the switches... _Mark_ <eichin@paycheck.cygnus.com> ... or at least I might be...
There were apparantly more than two switches; more like 10 or so. I think there may be two different models of securid cards, one with and one without switches; the only difference may be in the faceplate and the factory programming. - Bill