Osmocom SIMtrace 2¶

Osmocom SIMtrace 2 is a software, firmware and hardware system for passively tracing SIM-ME communication between the SIM card and the mobile phone, and remote SIM operation.
While it was designed for SIM-ME communication, it supports all ISO 7816 smart-cards using the T=0 protocol (the most common case).

It is a followup of the SIMtrace project, providing more functionalities (e.g. remote SIM operation) and supporting multiple boards (e.g. SIMtrace with SAM3S, sysmoQMOD).

Hardware¶

The SIMtrace 2 firmware supports several boards.
The firmware is written for an ATSAM3S4B micro-controller.

Note: The SAM3S is meanwhile labelled as not recommended for new designs by Atmel. However, there are plenty of hardware and software compatible upgrade options, including SAM4S. The upgrade is possible in the future.

SIMtrace v2¶

The main purpose of this board is to sniff the communication between a phone and a SIM card (or any card reader and smart-card).

This is the same circuit board as the previous SIMtrace v1, with the exception that the ATSAM3S4B micro-controller replaces the old AT91SAM7S64. Since the SAM3S is pin compatible with the SAM7S, any SIMtrace v1 board can be converted into a SIMtrace v2 board simply by replacing the micro-controller.

Note: This hardware is open source.

sysmoQMOD¶

The SAM3S micro-controller with SIMtrace 2 firmware is also used on the sysmoQMOD board to provide remote SIM operation capabilities.

Note: This hardware is not open source.

Firmware¶

The SIMtrace 2 firmware source code is available in git.
It is currently under active development and we recommend to flash the new firmware images to profit from the latest bug fixes and added functionalities.

The SIMtrace 2 firmware is a complete rewrite and can only be flashed on hardware with SAM3S ARM Cortex-M3-based micro-controllers.
The SIMtrace 2 firmware is not compatible with the older SIMtrace v1 using SAM7S ARM7TDMI-based micro-controllers.

trace¶

The trace application firmware allow to sniff the communication between a phone and a SIM card (or any card reader and smart-card).
It is intended for the SIMtrace v2 hardware and its function is analog to the SIMtrace v1.

The sniffing is completely passive. It uses the RST, ATR, PPS (baud rate tested with F/D up to 512/32), and WT (waiting timeout) to properly parse the ISO 7816-3 TPDUs.
Currently only the T=0 protocol is supported since this is the most common protocol used (we haven't seen T=1 in use).

The application firmware to be flashed using DFU is attachment:simtrace-trace-dfu.bin.

Flashing¶

The firmware images can be flashed as described here.

Development¶

To compile the firmware using the source code, or participate in the development, please refer to the instructions provided in the README .

Host PC Software¶

TODO