Architectures To Access Smart Card From A Generic Browser? Or: How To Bridge The Gap From Browser To PC/SC Stack?
Answer : The fact is that browsers can't talk to (cryptographic) smart cards for other purposes than establishing SSL. You shall need additional code, executed by the browser, to access smart cards. There are tens of custom and proprietary plugins (using all three options you mentioned) for various purposes (signing being the most popular, I guess) built because there is no standard or universally accepted way, at least in Europe and I 'm sure elsewhere as well. Creating, distributing and maintaining your own shall be a blast, because browsers release every month or so and every new release changes sanboxing ir UI tricks, so you may need to adjust your code quite often. And you probably would want to have GUI capabilities, at least for asking the permission of the user to access a card or some functionality on it. For creating a multiple-platform, multiple browser plugin, something like firebreath could be used. Personally, I don't believe that exposing PC/S...