New security issues raised by open cards

The methods, languages and tools for developing a smart card system share some characteristics with those of the embedded domain. Until recently, smart card programs were written in hand coded native assembly language. All programs (drivers, operating system, libraries, applications) were developed as a monolithic piece of code burned in the smart card ROM. Therefore, not only are traditional card systems difficult to develop (low-level programming language, very reduced-feature microcontroller, specific code for every microprocessor) but they also cannot support any evolution of their applications since all the application code is burned forever with the runtime engine in the ROM.