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Microsoft PIN Tool

The Microsoft PIN Tool modified for ActivClient-initialized PKI smartcards (HID Global cards with a static unblock code).

What ActivClient is

It's a PKI middleware developed by ASSA ABLOY for HID Global. HID Global recommends it for all their Crescendo line of PKI products (Crescendo cards + Crescendo keys).

ActivClient is also the only tool that cans provide a PKCS11 interface to Crescendo smartcards, all public acpkcs11.dll files found on the HID Global website will fail to load under PKCS11 apps such as XCA, Pkcs11Admin , BestCrypt & VeraCrypt.

And additionally again, ActivClient is the only tool able to generate the msroots file on Crescendo smartcards' PKCS15 filesystems.

How ActivClient unblocks cards

ActivClient is a strange beast, since if you initialize a Crescendo card with it it will:

  • disable the Admin user,
  • disable XAUTH / Unblock using Admin key feature and
  • generate a static unblock code instead of a DESede challenge/response unblock.

Thus if you have an ActivClient-initialized card, then you can't unblock it anymore with third-party smartcard tools. Not even VersaSec's vSEC_TOOL_K or vSEC_CMS_K will be able to unblock it because they expect a challenge/response procedure.

The same goes for the Microsoft PIN Tool, part of Windows XP's Base Smart Card Cryptographic Service Provider update (KB909520).

Modifying the Microsoft PIN Tool

I modified the Microsoft PIN Tool by adding/modifying the following features:

  • I added a nice-looking EXE file icon from MySmartLogon's EIDAuthenticate software.
  • I hid & disabled the challenge request UI elements of the main window
  • I patched the wpintool.exe file to automatically re-enable the disabled-on-startup UI elements for unblocking the card
  • I played around with Microsoft's MUIRCT.exe translation utility and generated French translations for both the original & ActivID versions of Microsoft's PIN Tool

Last Note

It works! I successfully unblocked my ActivClient-initialized Crescendo card (ActivClient v7) with my ActivID-modded wpintool.exe file. Just consider that your static unblock code is always the Response code to unblock the card and set a new User PIN.

No need to use ActivClient anymore for unblocking Crescendo cards.