What are the four main classes of attacks on smart cards?

What are the four main classes of attacks on smart cards?

• A. Physical, side-channel, software, and environmental
• B. Magnetic, optical, wireless, cloud
• C. Social engineering, phishing, spoofing, malware
• D. Hardware, firmware, network, cloud

Answer: (A)

Four broad classes of attacks against smart cards cover the main ways an attacker can compromise a card: physical attacks try to defeat the card’s tamper resistance and extract secrets from the hardware; side-channel attacks exploit information leaked during operation, such as power draw, timing, or electromagnetic emissions, to infer cryptographic data; software attacks target the code and data handling inside the card or its applets, exploiting bugs or insecure key management; environmental attacks use external stressors like voltage, temperature, or faults to cause errors or reveal information. This framing captures the primary avenues of compromise and aligns with how smart-card security is analyzed. The other options mix media types, social-engineering concepts, or broad system layers that don’t map to the established threat taxonomy for smart cards.

Four broad classes of attacks against smart cards cover the main ways an attacker can compromise a card: physical attacks try to defeat the card’s tamper resistance and extract secrets from the hardware; side-channel attacks exploit information leaked during operation, such as power draw, timing, or electromagnetic emissions, to infer cryptographic data; software attacks target the code and data handling inside the card or its applets, exploiting bugs or insecure key management; environmental attacks use external stressors like voltage, temperature, or faults to cause errors or reveal information. This framing captures the primary avenues of compromise and aligns with how smart-card security is analyzed. The other options mix media types, social-engineering concepts, or broad system layers that don’t map to the established threat taxonomy for smart cards.