Belgian eID

Belgian eID (beid), the Belgian electronic ID card.

References

• Belgian eID portal
• Belgian eID on Yobi
• belgian eID under Ubuntu 7.10 (Sebastien Wains)
• La carte d'identité électronique belge sous Linux
  Very interesting post on how to make the LOGON LCR002 card reader work on Linux.

Relevant packages

The following packages must be installed in order to use the Belgian eID card: The most recent packages as found in the Debian SID (unstable) distribution:

• Support of smartcard on Linux (most recent packages as in Debian SID (unstable)):
  • libccid — PC/SC driver for USB CCID smart card readers
  • libpcsclite1 — Middleware to access a smart card using PC/SC (library)
  • pcscd — Middleware to access a smart card using PC/SC (daemon side)
  • pcsc-tools — Some tools to use with smart cards and PC/SC
  • libpcsc-perl — Perl interface to the PC/SC smart card library

• Package for the Belgian eID card from Belgium.be:
  • eid-mw — Belgian eID package

Alternatively, there are also some beid packages in Debian/Ubuntu (cfr [1]:

• beid-common
• beid-mozilla-plugin
• beid-tools
• beidgui
• libbeid2
• libbeidlib3
• libbeidlibopensc2

How does it work?

The following is required to use the Belgian eID card in a browser:

• The drivers for the smart card reader
• A middleware to use with smart cards
• A PKCS#11 plugin for the browser

Ubuntu

I tried the LCR002 LOGON card reader. It is a PC/SC USB card reader that is advertised to work with Debian / Ubuntu. The one I have has a FNAC logo on it but it basically the same as advertised here.

This page explains how to make it work on Linux. Unfortunately the LOGON card reader requires the latest version of pcsc-lite (v1.7.4.1), which is only available in Debian SID (unstable). It is however possible to make it work on Ubuntu Maverick 10.10 and Firefox 3.6 by forcing package installation (ignore unmet dependencies):

# Install latest version of drivers & middleware
sudo dpkg -i libpcsclite1_1.7.4-1_i386.deb pcscd_1.7.4-1_i386.deb libccid_1.4.4-1_i386.deb pcsc-tools_1.4.17-1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i --ignore-depends=perl,perlapi-5.12.3 libpcsc-perl_1.4.12-1+b1_i386.deb
# Install latest version of beID middleware
eid-mw_4.0.0r925_i386_tcm146-132619.deb