For developers: Gemalto E-gate => Gemalto TOP cards migration FAQ

[FractalizeR]

Hello.

Everyone heard about TOP cards, that are going to replace egate on the market. I am often asked about migration costs so I am providing a small FAQ for developers here based on my small investigations on the subject.

Similarities:
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1. Gemalto TOP cards use the same T=0 protocol as egate cards and that means your card communication libraries and software will work without any updates.
2. Gemalto TOP cards use the same SCP01 secure session protocol as egate cards and that means that your existing card upgrade infrastructure will work with only some changes (more on this below)
3. Gemalto TOP cards has an Javacard API which is mostly a superset of the API of egate cards so your applets should work without any changes to the source code

Differencies:
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1. Gemalto TOP cards has cardmanager AID A000000018434D00 and egate has A0000000030000 (this needs to be changed in card update client)
2. Gemalto TOP cards has different default keys, that needs to be calculated (based on card EEPROM serial number). Egate had all default keys as 404142434445464748494A4B4C4D4E4F. You can ask your dealer for card keys calculator
3. You will need to recompile applets against new JC API libraries and use different applet versions depending on the card type (actually, almost every new card in the world has an API different from egate and you need to have different applets for it)
4. TOP cards use standard ISO reader (PKey-like). Every major hardware producer can (at least GPG and DITS can 100%) make readers alone or boxes with integrated readers at comparable with egate reader cost. Card+reader cost can be sometimes even low comparing with egate cards in some cases.

TOP cards advantages:
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1. TOP cards support AES encryption with up to 256-bit key and that is secure (egate does not support AES at all)
2. TOP cards support Full3DES (egate supports only insecure 3DES2 variant)
3. TOP cards support RSA with up to 2048 key length and egate supports only insecure 1024 bit keys
4. TOP cards are significantly faster than egate.
5. With switching your hardware to new reader types you get real card independence and freedom to migrate to any card you find suitable for you should you find TOP cards not suitable for you. This way you are not tied to cards with USB interface only which are, by the way, more expensive, that usual ones.
6. There is no need in any SDK to write applets for TOP cards. Standard Eclipse + free SDK from Sun is enough.
7. There are 72k EEPROM for your applets in TOP GX cards if you have long and complicated applet logic. If you need lower price, take TOP IS with 36k like e-gate.

That seems to be all

[FractalizeR]

Some small additions:

1. PKey Vista readers (at least Omni_key chip based) can read e-gate, TOP and JCOP cards without reprogramming. So, basing hardware on such readers give you universality and freedom
2. Default keyset on egate cards has version 1. Default keyset on TOP cards has version 0xFF and to indicate this you should provide 0x00 as a keyset number to PutKey APDU command.

[Infinity-Box]

If any one wants to purchase TOP cards, i will be reciving stock shortly
i also have ready samples to supply to programers
you can contact me phones@eim.ae , sonork : 100.108278