Card Verifiable Certificate

What Is a Card Verifiable Certificate?

A eID/ePassport smart cards." data-category="Security">Card Verifiable Certificate (CVC) is a compact digital certificate format designed specifically for smart card environments where storage space and processing power are constrained. Defined by BSI TR-03110 for European eID and ePassport applications, CVCs provide public-key authentication without the overhead of a full X.509 PKI stack.

CVCs are used extensively in PACE terminal authentication and chip authentication protocols, enabling a smart card to verify that the terminal requesting access is authorized -- and vice versa.

CVC vs X.509 Certificates

The key advantage of CVCs over X.509 certificates is their compact size and parsing simplicity:

Structure

A CVC contains a minimal set of fields encoded in a compact TLV structure:

• Certificate Authority Reference (CAR) -- identifies the issuing CA
• Certificate Holder Reference (CHR) -- identifies the certificate subject
• Public key -- the subject's ECC or RSA public key
• Certificate Holder Authorization Template (CHAT) -- encodes the access rights granted to the holder (e.g., read DG1, read DG2, read fingerprint)
• Effective date and expiration date -- validity period
• Signature -- CA's signature over the certificate body

Application in eID and ePassport

In ePassport systems compliant with ICAO 9303, CVCs play two critical roles:

• Terminal Authentication -- the inspection terminal presents its CVC chain to the passport chip, proving it is authorized to read sensitive biometric data groups (fingerprints, iris). The chip verifies the CVC signature against the country's CVCA root.
• Chip Authentication -- the passport chip uses its own key pair (referenced by a CVC) to prove its authenticity to the terminal, preventing chip cloning.

eID cards extend this model with additional CHAT roles for age verification, municipality identification, and restricted identity operations, all governed by the access rights encoded in the terminal's CVC.