CVC-Viewer

Website: realmoieen.github.io/CVC-Viewer  ·  Author: Moieen Abbas

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Description

CVC-Viewer is a desktop utility to view and inspect Card Verifiable Certificates (CVC). Card Verifiable Certificates are specialized digital certificates designed to be processed by constrained devices such as smart cards.

CVCs are defined in BSI TR-03110 and are widely used in the EU EAC (Extended Access Control) ecosystem for:

• ePassports
• eIDs
• Inspection Systems
• Terminal and DV/IS certificates

This tool provides a human-readable view of CV Certificates without assuming X.509 semantics.

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Features

• View CVC (BSI TR-03110) certificates

• Supports raw DER, Base64, and PEM-like inputs

• Displays:

  • Certificate Holder Reference (CHR)
  • Certificate Authority Reference (CAR)
  • Public Key parameters
  • Validity dates
  • Authorization roles and permissions
  • Authenticated Request / Outer Signature / Outer CAR
  • RSA with PKCSv1.5 and PSS (SHA1, SHA256, SHA512)
  • ECDSA (SHA1, SHA256, SHA512)

• Supports single certificates and certificate chains

• Drag and drop a certificate file onto the window to open it

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How to Use CVC-Viewer

CVC-Viewer is a JavaFX desktop application (styled with AtlantaFX). Each platform's GitHub Releases page offers two kinds of downloads:

• Installer (MSI on Windows, DMG on macOS, DEB on Linux) — bundles its own trimmed Java runtime, no prerequisites needed on the target machine.
• Portable (ZIP on Windows/macOS, tar.gz on Linux) — a much smaller download that ships no bundled JRE and relies on a system-installed Java 17 or newer.

Java Requirement (Portable downloads only)

• A Java 17+ JRE or JDK must be installed and on PATH (or JAVA_HOME set)
• The bundled installers have no such requirement — they carry their own runtime

Windows

Installer: run CVC-Viewer-<version>.msi from the Windows Releases asset.

Portable: extract CVC-Viewer-<version>-windows-portable.zip and run CVC-Viewer-<version>-portable.exe (requires system Java 17+).

A file chooser dialog appears on launch — select a CV Certificate, CV Request, or related EAC/CVC file — and the certificate details are displayed in the viewer.

macOS

Installer: open CVC-Viewer-<version>.dmg and drag the app into Applications.

Portable: extract CVC-Viewer-<version>-macos-portable.zip and run the CVC-Viewer.app bundle (requires system Java 17+).

Linux

Installer: install CVC-Viewer-<version>.deb via your package manager.

Portable: extract CVC-Viewer-<version>-linux-portable.tar.gz and run ./cvc-viewer.sh (requires system Java 17+). A .desktop entry is included for menu integration.

⚠️ This application requires a graphical environment to run — headless is not supported.

Opening a certificate directly (any platform)

java -jar CVC-Viewer-<version>.jar <certificate_path>

Windows Integration (Context Menu and File Extension Association Support)

The Windows portable ZIP contains an additional install.bat file. Running it registers CVC-Viewer in the Windows right-click context menu (Open in CVC Viewer) and associates it with .cvreq/.cvcert files.

⚠️ The registration links directly to the extracted EXE — do not move or rename it afterward without re-running install.bat.

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Certificate Parsing Logic

CVC-Viewer uses a robust and format-agnostic certificate parser designed specifically for CV Certificates.

Parsing Order

When a certificate file is loaded, the viewer applies the following logic:

1. PEM with headers If the file contains headers such as:

   -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
   

   the Base64 content is extracted and decoded.

   Supported PEM Headers Types:

    TYPE_CERTIFICATE = "CERTIFICATE";
    TYPE_CV_CERTIFICATE = "CV CERTIFICATE";
    TYPE_CV_LINK_CERTIFICATE = "CV LINK CERTIFICATE";
    TYPE_CV_REQUEST = "CV REQUEST";
    TYPE_CV_AUTHENTICATED_REQUEST = "CV AUTHENTICATED REQUEST";
   

2. Multiple PEM certificates If multiple BEGIN CERTIFICATE blocks are found, all certificates are parsed and loaded as a list (certificate chain support).

3. Comma-separated Base64 certificates If no headers are present but the file contains multiple Base64 blobs separated by commas, each entry is decoded as a separate CV certificate.

4. Plain Base64 certificate If the content looks like Base64 without headers, it is decoded directly.

5. Raw binary certificate (DER / CV) If none of the above formats match, the file is treated as raw binary CV certificate data and loaded as-is.

This ensures full compatibility with BSI TR-03110 encoded certificates.

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Supported Use Cases

CVC-Viewer supports the following real-world scenarios:

• Viewing Terminal Certificates (AT / IS / DV)

• Inspecting certificate chains (e.g., CVCA → DV → Terminal)

• Debugging EAC-based systems

• Analyzing certificates extracted from:

  • Smart cards
  • HSMs
  • ePassport inspection systems
  • File-based test vectors

• Educational and diagnostic use for PKI / EAC / ICAO implementations

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Screenshots

General Tab

Detail Tab

Path Tab

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How to Build CVC-Viewer

Requires JDK 17+ (Gradle's toolchain support will auto-provision one if needed).

git clone https://github.com/realmoieen/CVC-Viewer.git
cd CVC-Viewer

# Run from source
./gradlew run

# Run the test suite
./gradlew test

# Self-contained installer (current OS only - msi/dmg/deb are each built on their native OS)
./gradlew jpackageNative

# Portable, no-bundled-JRE artifact for the current OS family
./gradlew portableWindows   # or portableMac / portableLinux

Note: jpackageMac/jpackageLinux/portableMac/portableLinux must be run on their respective native OS — jpackage can't cross-compile installers for other platforms, and the JavaFX native libraries bundled into each portable artifact are platform-specific.

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Acknowledgments

This project includes the Bouncy Castle cryptographic libraries, available from:

• http://www.bouncycastle.org/

This project also includes a CVC module providing full support for Card Verifiable Certificates (BSI TR-03110) used by EU EAC ePassports and eIDs:

• https://github.com/eID-Testbeds/common-testbed-utilities

The UI is built with JavaFX and styled with AtlantaFX, a modern open-source JavaFX theme collection.

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License

Refer to the repository for licensing details.