5.9. Smart Card Authentication

Smart cards are an external hardware security feature, most commonly seen in credit cards, but also used by many businesses as authentication tokens. Smart cards can be used to protect Red Hat Virtualization virtual machines.

Enabling Smart Cards

Disabling Smart Cards

Configuring Client Systems for Smart Card Sharing

Configuring RHEL Clients with CoolKey Smart Card Middleware

CoolKey Smart Card middleware is a part of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Install the Smart card support group. If the Smart Card Support group is installed on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux system, smart cards are redirected to the guest when Smart Cards are enabled. The following command installs the Smart card support group:

yum groupinstall "Smart card support"

# yum groupinstall "Smart card support"

Configuring RHEL Clients with Other Smart Card Middleware

Register the library in the system’s NSS database. Run the following command as root:

modutil -dbdir /etc/pki/nssdb -add "module name" -libfile /path/to/library.so

# modutil -dbdir /etc/pki/nssdb -add "module name" -libfile /path/to/library.so

Configuring Windows Clients

Red Hat does not provide PKCS #11 support to Windows clients. Libraries that provide PKCS #11 support must be obtained from third parties. When such libraries are obtained, register them by running the following command as a user with elevated privileges:

modutil -dbdir %PROGRAMDATA%\pki\nssdb -add "module name" -libfile C:_\Path\to\module_.dll

modutil -dbdir %PROGRAMDATA%\pki\nssdb -add "module name" -libfile C:_\Path\to\module_.dll