BeID middleware

About

This repository contains the software and viewer for the Belgian electronic identity card. With this, you can:

• Communicate with secure websites that require eID authentication
• Sign documents and emails using your eID
• Using the viewer, read the identity data on eID cards, verify their validity, and store them for future usage
• Using the provided API, do all of the above in custom applications of your own.

If you wish to contribute, use the normal github procedures (i.e., file an issue, open a pull request, ...).

For help with getting the software to work, please contact the support desk of the administration whose services you are attempting to use.

Installation

Binary installation

The instructions below are meant for people who want to work on the eID software. If you want to just use the software, these instructions are not for you; in that case, we instead recommend you download it from the official website.

Code from git repository:

• Make sure you have libtool 2.2.7c or above, autoconf, automake, libassuan, and the autoconf archive installed, and (where relevant) in your $PATH
• run autoreconf -i
• proceed to the next step

Code from a source package, or code you just bootstrapped as above

GNU/Linux

Make sure you have the development packages for the following libraries installed:

For the PKCS#11 authentication module:

• PC/SC Lite
• (Optionally) p11-kit

If the dialogs and/or the viewer are not disabled:

• GTK3 (note: GTK2 is no longer supported)
• (Optionally) libassuan, for better integration of the dialogs with desktop environments

If the viewer is not disabled:

• OpenSSL. Note: you'll also need the "openssl" binary in your path, which is often not part of the openssl development package.
• libxml2
• cURL
• libproxy

After that it's just:

./configure 
make
sudo make install

You should now have beid* libraries in /usr/local/lib and one beid* executable in /usr/local/bin

At runtime, you will need a running pcsc daemon ("pcscd") with the correct driver for your type of card reader (ccid drivers are generally installed automatically along with the pcscd package)

Pin dialogs can be disabled eg for applications that have their own dialogs:

./configure --enable-dialogs=no # the default is yes

macOS

To build the eID middleware (CTKToken + pkcs#11) and its installer: run the buildscript located at eid-mw\scripts\mac\make-mac.sh To build the eID Viewer and its installer: run the buildscript located at eid-mw\scripts\mac\make-viewer.sh

The xcode project for the CTKToken is located in eid-mw\cardcomm\ctkToken The xcode project for pkcs#11 and the eID Viewer is located in the top directory eid-mw

Windows

Run the buildscript located at eid-mw\scripts\windows\build_all.bat This script will generate some version dependant files that are used in the Visual Studio projects It will also build the middleware and viewer, as well as their installers

The eID Middleware Visual Studio solution (2022) is located in eid-mw\VS_2022 The eID Viewer Visual Studio solution (2022) is located in eid-mw\plugins_tools\eid-viewer\Windows\VS_2022

Firefox

To use the Belgian eID in Firefox, we recommend the Firefox extension to handle configuration automatically. The extension will be installed on Linux and OSX. The default install locations:

• Linux: DATADIR/mozilla/extensions/{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384} (DATADIR is by default PREFIXDIR/lib - PREFIXDIR is by default /usr/local)
• OSX: /Library/Application Support/Mozilla/Extensions/{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}

To change the install location:

./configure --with-mozext=/mozilla/firefox/extensions/directory

To create an XPI package, run:

make xpipackage   

Common errors

Q: I see

./configure: line 11859: syntax error near unexpected token `ac_ext=c'
./configure: line 11859: `ac_ext=c'

How do I fix that?

A: you missed the autoconf-archive dependency. Please install that and retry.

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