Hello, Razvan Dragomirescu:
I am not sure if this has been discussed before or how hard it would be to implement, but I'm looking for a way to integrate a smartcard with Tor - essentially, I want to be able to host hidden service keys on the card. I'm trying to bind the hidden service to a hardware component (the smartcard) so that it can be securely hosted in a hostile environment as well as impossible to clone/move without physical access to the smartcard.
I'm not sure that this solution is 100% for your purposes. But recently I've added OpenPGP smartcard support to do exactly this into OnionBlance [1]+[2]. What it does is that it just signs a HS descriptor using OpenPGP SC (via 'Signature' or 'Authentication' key). [It's still a pretty dirty hack, there is no even any exception handling.] You can use it by installing "manager/front" service with your smartcard in it via OnionBalace and balancing to your actual HS. There is no any bandwidth limiting (see OnionBalance design). You can setup OB and an actual HS on the same machine for sure.
I have Tor running on the USBArmory by InversePath ( http://inversepath.com/usbarmory.html ) and have a microSD form factor card made by Swissbit ( www.swissbit.com/products/security-products/overwiev/security-products-overview/ ) up and running on it. I am a JavaCard developer myself and I have developed embedded Linux firmwares before but I have never touched the Tor source.
There is a nice JavaC applet by Joeri [3]. It's the same applet that Yubikey is using. You can find well-written tutorial of producing your OpenPGP card at Subgraph [4].
Is there anyone that is willing to take on a side project doing this? Would it be just a matter of configuring OpenSSL to use the card (I haven't tried that yet)?
I'm not sure that it is worth to implement a card support in little-t-tor itself. As I said, all the logic is about HS descriptor signing. Python and other langs that provide readablity will provide security then. I think/hope so.
[1] https://github.com/mark-in/onionbalance [2] https://github.com/mark-in/openpgpycard [3] http://sourceforge.net/projects/javacardopenpgp/ [4] https://subgraph.com/sgos/documentation/smartcards/index.en.html
Hope it helps.