You will need to put your SIM into the SIMtrace hardware, connect one of the four flex cables to the SIMtrace hardware, put the other side into the SIM socket of your phone. Use USB to connect the SIMtrace hardware to the PC. On your PC you should be able to see the USB device now.

SIMtrace being connected

$ ./simtrace simtrace - GSM SIM and smartcard tracing (C) 2010 by Harald Welte <laforge@gnumonks.org> Launching the simtrace will try to find the SIMtrace hardware and then try to claim the USB device. The application will send the received data encapsulated in the GSMTAP format on localhost and the IANA assigned GSMTAP port.

The wireshark application will start a GUI and given the right permissions you should be able listen to the localhost interface and filter for the GSMTAP port on 4729. You should be able to see the decoded messages like in the figure below.

SIMtrace sending data

For some cards the firmware does not send an USB message at the end of the ATR. The ATR and first APDU will be send in one message and the host utility fails to split APDUs and nothing will be traced. A band-aid for the firmware exists and can be found on the mailinglist.

For some new high speed cards the firmware can lose bytes. The issue appears to be when the received bytes will be copied to the memory of the USB controller. The workaround is to reduce the size of the buffer.

The hardware is capable to be used as an ordinary card reader, provide Man-In-The-Middle (MITM) attacks, or operate as a SIM. The firmware currently does not have support for these modes. The SIMtrace hardware supports ISO7816 Part 3 T=0/T=1 protocols, it basically can be used to intercept and analyze any traffic from (ISO7816) smart cards. This includes SIM cards, Pay TV cards (smart card for CAM), ATM cards, chip credit card, PKI smart cards, e-passport etc. etc. However watch out: You have to make your chip card fitting in the "SIM card size" ID-000 reader or build another adapter.