This is a simple smartcard shell that has evolved from a more convenient way
to enter APDUs (compare: pcsc-tools scriptor) through a tool to open a secure
channel to a cyberflex card (hence the name) to a more generic tool to act
on smart-cards.

It is written in Python (you might need 2.4 or up) and needs pycsc 0.3 (or up)
to communicate with the smart card terminal (with PC/SC, e.g. pcsc-lite).
You can get pycsc from http://homepage.mac.com/jlgiraud/pycsc/Pycsc.html

NOTE: pycsc might not compile out of the box with current pcsc-lite (e.g. 
1.3.*). You should use the included pycsc-0.0.3_new-pcsc.patch in that
case.

The shell has only been tested on a Linux system but should be platform
independent, if you have Python, PC/SC and pycsc for your target platform.
I am however unable to give support for any platform but Linux. 

Some of the shell functionality (history, tab-completion, etc.) is
provided by python's readline module which is not available for all 
platforms, IIRC.


INSTRUCTIONS:
Simply start cyberflex-shell.py. You may also call it with parameter -l
to list all detected readers or parameter -r to select one of the readers.
Within the shell you may enter APDUs (in hex, case ignored, white space 
ignored) and press enter to send them and see the response.

Use the commands connect, disconnect or reconnect to open, close or open-
and-close the connection to a smart-card. This is especially helpful when
you want to change the card without exiting from the shell.

For some card types there are card drivers provided in the cards/ directory,
and the shell will try to automatically load the right driver(s). (I made 
the story rather complicated, see cards/__init__.py.) 
You should be able to load and unload drivers using the driver_load and 
driver_unload commands at will, but that is a new and experimental feature.

Most card drivers provide additional commands to simplify working with
the card in question. Use the help command to see the set of currently
available commands.

Note that this is an educational tool and not for security purposes. All
commands are written to the shell history (${HOME}/.cyberflex-shell.history)
so be aware that your PINs and other sensitive data might end up on your 
hard-disk.

Have fun
  -- Henryk Pl<50>tz <henryk@ploetzli.ch>, July 2006