The scsisim (SCSI SIM) library provides an API for accessing USB SIM card readers that use the SCSI protocol. It is a user-space "driver" that calls into the Linux SCSI generic kernel driver.

There are many serial-based and PC/SC-based USB SIM card readers available, and Linux support for them generally isn't an issue. However, I purchased an inexpensive "APM UR-200" USB SIM card reader in France awhile back. It includes a basic "SimCardRead.exe" Windows application that allows you to view and edit SIM card contacts and SMS messages, but nothing else. Linux and Mac users are completely out of luck, with no end-user application available.

I did some USB packet sniffing on Windows to see what was going back and forth between the application and the USB device. It turns out that the device uses standard GSM commands embedded in SCSI commands to read from and write to the SIM card. I reverse-engineered the device's initialization packets and SIM commands, and the result is the scsisim library. Now I can read and edit SIM cards using the device on Linux, as well as view and edit additional "hidden" SIM files and data that the Windows application does not.

I have yet to see another SIM card reader that uses SCSI, so the scsisim library is necessarily based on a sample size of one device (and over a dozen different SIM cards). If you come across another SCSI-based SIM device, you should be able to add the device-specific code to device.h and get things working relatively quickly. Pull requests welcome.

For the record, here is what lsusb reports for the "APM UR-200" USB SIM card reader:

ID 0420:1307 Chips and Technologies Celly SIM Card Reader

Here is some output from the demonstration program (with sanitized numbers). This was run on an Orange France SIM card:

chris@deb:~/scsisim$ build/demo sg3 -p 1234
PIN enabled on card; 3 attempts remaining
Do you want to send PIN 1234 to the card? [y/n] y
[INFO: PIN verification successful.]
ICCID = 8933015XXXXXXXXXXXXX
SPN = Orange F
====================
ADN record #1
Contact name:   Maison
Contact number: 0172XXXXXX
====================
ADN record #2
Contact name:   Mike
Contact number: 0620XXXXXX
====================
ADN record #3
Contact name:   Balance
Contact number: #123#
====================

[Output truncated for brevity]

====================
ADN record #249
ADN record unused
====================
ADN record #250
ADN record unused
====================
SMS record #1
Status: Message received and read
SMSC:   31654XXXXXXX
Sender: 3364XXXXXXX
Date:   05/02/2011
Time:   21:31:18
Timezone: 00
Message: Mostly. Gonna stay a bit longer
====================
SMS record #2
Status: Message received and read
SMSC:   33689004000
Sender: 20220
Date:   11/08/2010
Time:   08:14:31
Timezone: 64
Message: Orange Info : voici les mots clés disponibles INFO, METEO, SPORT, FOOT, RUGBY, TV, LOTO, QUINTE, BLAGUE, BOURSE, HOROSCOPE
====================

[Output truncated for brevity]

====================
SMS record #49
Status:	Unused space
[ERROR: SMS record parse failed: Invalid SMS Center number]
====================
SMS record #50
Status:	Unused space
[ERROR: SMS record parse failed: Invalid SMS Center number]
chris@deb:~/scsisim$ 

Assuming gcc and make are installed on your system, building everything is as easy as running make from the project root directory. The makefile builds the following in the build subdirectory:

• libscsisim.so (shared library)
• libscsisim.a (static library)
• demo (demo application linked to the static library)

To run the demo application, type ./demo [DEVICE] at the command line, where [DEVICE] is the SCSI generic name (for example, sg3). You can determine the SCSI generic name for a device by running dmesg | grep "scsi generic sg". Or if you have the lsscsi program installed, just run lsscsi -g.

Additionally, you can use the following command-line options with the demo application:

-p [PIN]: If the SIM card has a PIN (CHV) enabled, you must specify a PIN to access some of the card's contents.

-v: Display verbose information, including raw SCSI commands and responses, diagnostic information, etc. All verbose information goes to stderr, so you can redirect output as needed.

NOTE: On some Linux distros (Debian and Ubuntu; maybe others), you must add the current user to the disk group. This ensures that the user has sufficient privileges to access the device directly using SCSI. Otherwise, you will have to run the demo app as the root user.

For example, on Debian type the following command to add a user to the disk group (replace [USERNAME] with the current username):

$ usermod -a -G disk [USERNAME]

To use the scsisim library in your own applications, all you need to do is include scsisim.h in your source code (and link the static or shared library, of course). For detailed information about the API functions, see the documentation in scsisim.h. See also demo.c for examples.

Briefly, here is how an application uses the scsisim library to access a SIM card:

1. Call the scsisim_open_device() function to open the device.

2. Call the scsisim_init_device() function to send any required initialization commands to the device. Device-specific initialization data is defined in device.h.

3. Call functions that interact directly with the SIM card:

   • scsisim_select_file()
   • scsisim_get_response()
   • scsisim_select_file_and_get_response()
   • scsisim_read_record()
   • scsisim_read_binary()
   • scsisim_update_record()
   • scsisim_update_binary()
   • scsisim_verify_chv()
   • scsisim_send_raw_command()

   There are also functions that parse and process data returned from the SIM card. Although these functions are technically not necessary for the "driver", they do make it easier to work with SIM card data:

   • scsisim_packed_bcd_to_ascii()
   • scsisim_unpack_septets()
   • scsisim_parse_sms()
   • scsisim_parse_adn()
   • scsisim_map_gsm_chars()
   • scsisim_get_gsm_text()

4. When done, call the scsisim_close_device() function to close the device.