OMNI CARD

["Mark W. Eichin" <eichin@paycheck.cygnus.com>]

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...