Common Access Card
[1] Defense personnel that use the CAC include the Selected Reserve and National Guard, United States Department of Defense (DoD) civilian employees, United States Coast Guard (USCG) civilian employees and eligible DoD and USCG contractor personnel.
The CAC also satisfies the requirements for digital signature and data encryption technologies: authentication, integrity and non-repudiation.
This number includes reissues to accommodate changes in name, rank, or status and to replace lost or stolen cards.
DoD has deployed an issuance infrastructure at over 1,000 sites in more than 25 countries around the world and is rolling out more than one million card readers and associated middleware.[when?]
The program that is currently used to issue CAC IDs is called the Real-Time Automated Personnel Identification System (RAPIDS).
Other information on the front includes (if applicable) the holders's: pay grade, rank, and federal identifier.
[2] The CAC is said to be resistant to identity fraud,[3] tampering, counterfeiting, and exploitation and provides an electronic means of rapid authentication.
[1] The Geneva Conventions Identification Card is the most common CAC and is given to active duty/reserve armed forces and uniformed service members.
The Geneva Convention Accompany Forces Card is issued to emergency-essential civilian personnel.
The ID and Privilege Common Access Card is for civilians residing on military installations.
[4] On October 1, 2012, all certificates encrypted with less than 2,048-bits were placed on revocation status, rendering legacy CACs useless except for visual identification.
This is used for when the user passes through a guarded gate, or purchases items from a store, such as a PX/BX that require a level of privileges to use the facility.
[6] The integrated circuit chip (ICC) contains information about the owner, including the PIN and one or more PKI digital certificates.
[citation needed] The CAC can be used for access into computers and networks equipped with one or more of a variety of smartcard readers.
In an attempt to correct this situation, Apple Federal Systems has done work for adding some support for Common Access Cards to their later Snow Leopard operating system updates out of the box using the MUSCLE (Movement for the Use of Smartcards in a Linux Environment) project.
Thursby's PKard for iOS software extends CAC support to Apple iPads and iPhones.
Another approach to solve this problem, which is now well documented, involves the use of a new project, CoolKey,[11] to gain Common Access Card functionality.
Access is usually granted after first removing the CAC from the RF shield and then holding it against a reader either mounted on a wall or located on a pedestal.
Also, the gold contacts on the ICC can become dirty and require cleaning with either solvents or a rubber pencil eraser.
Fixing or replacing a CAC typically requires access to a RAPIDS facility, causing some practical problems.
Use of, for example a field-replaced laptop computer that was not prepared with the user's CAC before shipment would be impossible to use without some form of direct access to Active Directory beforehand.
