The Austrian social insurance card the e-Card can be upgraded free of charge to a Citizen Card. The key of the common certificate is also appropriate to sign E-mails with MS Outlook. The keys on the e-Card are ECDSA-keys unlike to the ATM card which has an RSA-key. Unfortunately there is no implementation of the ECDSA in Windows XP. Windows Vista supports some of the standard curves but not the appropriate one for the Citizen Card. It is possible to send ECDSA-signed E-mails via MS Outlook but the verification of the validity fails.

The goal of the project was to develop a Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) for MS Outlook which will make it possible to check the signature of e-Card-ECDSA-signed E-mails. The check of the signature occurs with the Open Source library Crypto++ and is compatible with Windows XP.

After upgrading the e-Card to a Citizen Card a comprehensive research about the possible solutions was made. Because of the transparency for the user and the generic character the Cryptographic Service Provider (CSP) technology in combination with the Crypto++ library was chosen. After familiarizing with these technologies the software development and software test phase started. Because of the huge expenditure of time and unexpected problems during the programming phase the software could not be accomplished in time.

Because of unexpected problems in the software development and software test phase the software (CSP) could not be delivered in time.