MaskTech Group Acquires Stake in Smart Card Software Specialist Cellnetrix Technology

Nuremberg based MaskTech Group, a leading independent provider of highly secure embedded products, has finalized a stake acquisition in Cellnetrix Technology to become the largest shareholder of the company. Headquartered in Zelenograd, a satellite city of Moscow, Cellnetrix Technology develops secure embedded software for various telecom applications and provides consultancy services

Operating mostly as an OEM software development company, Cellnetrix has become a reliable partner for more than 30 businesses in the different parts of the world. Following the growing demand for embedded security Cellnetrix from the very beginning focused on secure embedded operating systems based on Java technologies and related trusted applications. Today the company is reckoned among a very few independent developers in the world able to license its smart card technology to a wide range of market players: silicon and smart card manufacturers, software developers, integrators and service providers.

The strategic partnership agreement that accompanied the deal will allow both companies to operate effectively on the growing market and join the efforts in development of modern highly sophisticated secure solutions for ID and Telecom markets. The two companies are addressing the increasing demand for embedded, certified to a very high security levels like Common Criteria EAL4+, products in various application domains and aim to be ranked among the leading independent providers in the world in offering highly reliable embedded security solutions and services.

Through this partnership, MaskTech and Cellnetrix Technology are able to streamline their existing product portfolio, cooperate in development, marketing and sales activities.

“Our two companies perfectly complement each other from the marketing point of view”, said Matthias Duensser, CEO of MaskTech. “By becoming a participating partner at Cellnetrix Technology we are eager to combine our products and technology know-how for the benefit of our customers”.

“We are pleased to welcome a partner and a strategic investor with the very broad expertise in ID domain“, said Vladimir Nagin, CEO and co-founder of Cellnetrix Technology. “We really hope that such move will allow us to extend significantly our product portfolio and services proposition and to support our clients better worldwide”.

About MaskTech

Masktech is the #1 independent supplier for highest security embedded chipsets, operating systems and related middleware for electronic identification applications. Our portfolio includes generic and customized mask solutions for state-of-the-art contactless and contact based cryptographic chipsets and related security support. MTCOS is used in more than 40 [Q2-2011] national ePassport, national/ID, eHealth, eResidencePermit, eDrivingLicense and other human credentialing applications. MTCOS is an ISO/7816 multi-application operating system and certified according to CC EAL4+ on various semiconductors.

About Cellnetrix Technology

Cellnetrix Technology is a developer and provider of secure embedded solutions and technologies that help making wireless mobility and Internet services more reliable and secure. The company implements software on different hardware platforms and delivers industry-grade secure smart card operating system CellSIM OS targeted for universal subscriber identity modules (USIM) and other secure network-connected devices, develops secure smart card-centric value-added applications, provides consultancy and technical support services. Embedded software provided by Cellnetrix is fully based on inter-industry standards such as ISO, ETSI, Global Platform, OMA and widely adopted Java programming language.

Field tests of remote applications and file management on the SIM via BIP

Although BIP support (stands for Bearer independent protocol) used mostly to access remote resources from SIM card using packet data interfaces such as GPRS was implemented quite a while ago in our CellSIM operating system we have never had a chance to test it in field. All previous tests were only done in a normal card reader.

Today we did real tests using BIP managing (U)SIM card remotely: application download and installation, file management etc. Speed compared to SMS based transport was really a fun.


This is quite sad that not so many handsets, especially mainstream like Android or iOS support such a feature. Let's hope that support for BIP will be integrated into RIL library of Android in the nearest future.

Cellnetrix celebrates its 4 year anniversary

It was 4 years ago that a small group of smart card experts started a new smart card venture targeted on development of next generation secure embedded solutions. Although it may seem that the company has been established only recently, several years have passed already from the day Cellnetrix started its operations.

Following the growing demands for embedded security Cellnetrix from the very beginning focused on secure embedded operating systems based on Java technologies and related trusted applications. Today the company is reckoned among a very few independent developers in the world able to license its smart card technology to a wide range of market players: silicon and smart card manufacturers, software developers, integrators and service providers.

Operating mostly as OEM Software Company, Cellnetrix has become a reliable partner for more than 25 businesses in the different parts of the world. To date, Cellnetrix’s smart card CellSIM OS has been licensed to 5 customers world-wide and its smart card software and applications can be found in millions of SIM cards.

Despite the economy downturn during the recent year, Cellnetrix’s team is very optimistic about the future because the demand for secure technologies has never been so immense than today.

The company is delighted to continue serving its clients bringing enlarged product portfolio and increased quality of service.

More details can be found on the website: http://cellnetrix.com.

Cellnetrix Opens A New Smart Card Competence Center In Zelenograd

Responding to the growing number of requests for secure embedded solutions Cellnetrix has opened in the new office spaces a fully functional R&D competence center for embedded security and smart card technologies.

This move makes it possible to serve customers better world-wide and to increase number of ongoing development projects. Cellnetrix is currently one of a few software developers who provide fully customizable embedded (U)SIM and M2M solutions for smart card manufacturers, silicon and hardware vendors. Unique business model of the company is based on royalty-free licensing including source code option. Zelenograd, a Moscow satellite city, has been known as a center of electronic technologies in the former Soviet Union and Russia for more than 50 years. Now it is still a place where a lot of software high-tech companies are located owning to the good infrastructure, closeness to the international airport and city of Moscow and availability of experienced specialists.

Please note our new address for any postal correspondence:

Proezd 4922, bld. 4/3, Zelenograd, Moscow, 124498, Russian Federation
Tel. +7 499 995 0773

We will speak at Smart Event 2009 on the following topic "Reverse engineering of Java Card applications: a real thread or a challenge?"

CAP file is a common binary redistributable in the Java Card world which contains all required information for a smart card manufacturer to be able to upload the third party application onto the SIM and deliver the final product. Such scenario is quite common for mobile applications which are usually provided by one smart card vendor or by an independent company and distributed to all vendors wishing to deliver SIM cards to an operator or just to take part in a preliminary testing. Therefore, quite often such an applet may fall into hands of competitors. Owing to the growth of the Java Card application market and the increasing size and complexity of the applications itself such thread should carefully considered.
It is known that interpreted Java byte codes are quite vulnerable to reverse engineering attacks which can be performed even with the open source java decompilation tools unless the compiled code underwent obfuscation. Standard Sun’s converter normally employed for CAP generation works to a great extent as an obfuscator hiding class and field names as well as method signatures. Nevertheless, a CAP file generated by a common Sun’s compiler and converter can be reverse engineered and in most cases will remain compilable.
A proposed by the authors CAP decompilation technique is a two stage process. At first step class files are reconstructed from the original CAP using the reversed procedure followed by the common converter, then, source codes can be recovered using available open source tools such as JAD. The reconstructed code misses original class, method and field names and its analysis itself can be a challenge, however, it can be used for certain operations. The proposed technique is sensitive to java compiler and converter versions used for the original compilation. Therefore certain counter-measures implemented in the converter such as flow or stack operations obfuscation can prevent from the correct code reconstruction.
The presented results demonstrate that vulnerability to reverse engineering attacks should be seriously considered by Java Card developers intending to distribute their applications to the third parties especially for Java Card 3.0 platform.