Personal Identity Verification (PIV) Specification

1. System Overview

• Standards: NIST SP 800-73-5, ISO/IEC 7816-4
• Encoding: BER-TLV (Binary), X.509 (Certificates)
• Crypto: RSA-2048, ECC P-256/P-384, 3DES
• Protocol: T=1 (Contact), T=CL (Contactless)

2. Application Identifiers (AID)

Application	AID (Hex)	Description
PIV Card App	A0 00 00 03 08 00 00 10 00 01 00	NIST PIV Application

3. APDU Command Reference

CLA: 00 (ISO) or 80 (Proprietary).

Command	INS	P1	P2	Data	Le	Description
SELECT	A4	04	0C	[AID]	-	Select Application
GET DATA	CB	3F	FF	[Tag List]	Len	Read Data Object
VERIFY	20	00	80	[PIN]	-	Verify PIN
GEN AUTH	87	Alg	Key	[Data]	Len	General Authenticate

4. Data Objects (Containers)

Accessed via GET DATA with Tag 5C + [Container Tag]. The response is wrapped in a Template Tag (7E or similar) containing the data object.

Name	Tag	Container ID	Description
CCC	5F C1 07	DB 00	Card Capability Container
CHUID	5F C1 02	30 00	Card Holder Unique Identifier
Auth Cert	5F C1 05	01 01	X.509 Certificate for PIV Auth (9A)
Sign Cert	5F C1 0A	01 00	X.509 Certificate for Digital Signature (9C)
Card Auth Cert	5F C1 01	05 00	X.509 Certificate for Card Auth (9E)
Key Mgmt Cert	5F C1 0B	01 02	X.509 Certificate for Key Management (9D)
Security Object	5F C1 06	90 00	Security Object (Signed Hashes)
Discovery Obj	5F C1 07	60 00	PIV Discovery Object

5. Key References & Algorithms

Key References (P2 in GEN AUTH / VERIFY)

Key Ref	Usage	Description
00	Global PIN	Global Card PIN
80	App PIN	PIV Application PIN (Verification required for 9A/9C usage)
96	Global PIN	PIV Card Application Global PIN
9A	Auth	PIV Authentication Key (Internal Auth)
9C	Sign	Digital Signature Key (Internal Auth / Signing)
9D	Key Mgmt	Key Management Key (External Auth / Decryption)
9E	Card Auth	Card Authentication Key (Physical Access)

Algorithms (P1 in GEN AUTH)

Alg ID	Description
00	3DES (3 Key)
07	RSA 2048
11	ECC P-256
14	ECC P-384

6. Authentication Flows

6.1 PIN Verification

1. SELECT PIV App (A0...00).
2. VERIFY (00 20 00 80) with 8-byte padded PIN (0xFF padding).
   • SW 9000: Success.
   • SW 63Cx: Failure (x retries remaining).

6.2 Internal Authenticate (Signing)

Used for SSH / mTLS.

1. SELECT PIV App.
2. VERIFY PIN (80).
3. GEN AUTH (00 87 <Alg> 9A) with Dynamic Auth Template (7C).
   • Input: Challenge / Hash.
   • Output: Signature.

7. Verification Implementation (Rust)

The PivController now supports high-level user authentication:

• authenticate_user(pin):
  1. Selects PIV App.
  2. Verifies PIN.
  3. Reads Authentication Certificate (Tag 5F C1 05).
  4. Parses the X.509 certificate to extract the Public Key (RSA or ECC P-256).
  5. Generates a random 32-byte challenge.
  6. Signs the challenge using the card's private key (GEN AUTH).
  7. Verifies the signature against the extracted public key.