What are the four main classes of attacks on smart cards?

• A. Physical, side-channel, software, and environmental
• B. Magnetic, optical, wireless, cloud
• C. Social engineering, phishing, spoofing, malware
• D. Hardware, firmware, network, cloud

Answer: (A)

Four broad classes of attacks against smart cards cover the main ways an attacker can compromise a card: physical attacks try to defeat the card’s tamper resistance and extract secrets from the hardware; side-channel attacks exploit information leaked during operation, such as power draw, timing, or electromagnetic emissions, to infer cryptographic data; software attacks target the code and data handling inside the card or its applets, exploiting bugs or insecure key management; environmental attacks use external stressors like voltage, temperature, or faults to cause errors or reveal information. This framing captures the primary avenues of compromise and aligns with how smart-card security is analyzed. The other options mix media types, social-engineering concepts, or broad system layers that don’t map to the established threat taxonomy for smart cards.