How to communicate with Felica memory/smart cards?

2
votes

I have a Felica card. The first question is what actually is this card? Is it a Smart Card or it is a simple memory card? Is it a kind of Java Card and can I load .cap files inside or it has its proprietary fixed contents and I can't load any applet? Is it GlobalPlatform standard complaint?

I read here that:

Sony’s proprietary FeliCa is a smartcard technology that is similar to ISO/IEC 14443. FeliCa has a file system similar to that defined in ISO/IEC 7816-4. The file system and commands for access to the file system are standardized in JIS X 6319-4 [28]. In addition, the FeliCa system has proprietary cryptography and security features.

After that I tried to send some APDU commands to it. The first step was do some configuration changes with the reader. Because my reader is configured to read ISO14443 Type A and Type B cards and not Felica cards.

As both Felica and ISO/IEC 14443 cards use 13.56 MHz frequency for the carrier, I think the difference between these types is in the Protocol layer only. Am I right? If so, what is the name of Felica cards transmission protocol? (For ISO/IEC 14443 cards, we have T=1 and T=CL protocols).

After configuring the reader, I tried to send commands to card:

Connect successful.
Send: 00 A4 04 00 00
Recv: 6A 81
Time used: 31.000 ms

Send: 00 C0 00 00 00
Recv: 6A 81
Time used: 28.000 ms

Send: 00 CA 00 00 00
Recv: 6A 81
Time used: 35.000 ms

As you see above, I receive 0x6A81 status words only.

I also searched a lot of ACS Reader Datasheets, Some NXP Application notes and for sure JIS X 6319-4 standard for a list of commands for this type of cards. But I found nothing applicable.

So, the questions are:

  1. What actually is Felica? (Smart? Memory?)
  2. What is the difference between Felica cards and ISO/IEC14443 cards? Is it related to NFC?
  3. How to communicate with this card and transfer data?

Update:

My card'S ATR is : 3b 8f 80 01 80 4f 0c a0 00 00 03 06 11 00 3b 00 00 00 00 42

1
nfcsmartcardjavacardcontactless-smartcard
FeliCa is not a Java Card. It is a data storage card, basically an alternative for NXP's Mifare card. It is related to NFC, because it follows ISO 18092 standard. Have a look at this article. – vojta
Could you please post ATR of your card? – vojta
@vojta Thanks for the article dear Vojta. ATR added to the question. – Ebrahim Ghasemi
On the interface level you could consider FeliCa cards as 14443, type C (but to due patents they were not considered in the standard). The number of differences between type A and B indicates, what order of magnitude of incompatibility you have, and where additional specifications are necessary.Hint: the Octopus payment card of Hongkong is FeliCa, you might want to buy a reader for that to get past the protocol hurdle. – guidot
@guidot Thank you dear guidot. Actually I have a Felica Compatible reader. The problem is that I don't have any idea about the APDU commands that these types of cards support. – Ebrahim Ghasemi

1 Answers

5
votes

What actually is Felica? (Smart? Memory?)

It's more like a memory card than a smart card with regards to functionality. Reading data in blocks is typical for a memory card and the card has very limited functionality besides basic authentication based on symmetric cryptography.

You could argue that it is a smart card in the sense that the implementation seems to carry a multi-purpose CPU (see Annex B).

It seems however impossible to change the behavior of the smart card the same way you'd do e.g. in a Global Platform Java Card. So I'd classify it as a memory card with a proprietary protocol.

What is the difference between Felica cards and ISO/IEC14443 cards? Is it related to NFC?

It uses a proprietary communication protocol which includes both the data -link layer (which you are asking about here) and the command/response layer.

How to communicate with this card and transfer data?

The fact that you are sending APDU's instead of FeliCa's proprietary command / response pairs indicate that you are using a translation layer. This translation layer is likely to be in the reader / reader driver. The API of this translation layer is likely to be specified in the PCSC 2.01 specifications (section 3.2.2.1 Storage Card Functionality Support, using CLA byte 0xFF).

You probably need the reader's user manual as well, if just to figure out in which location to store the required keys.