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Combinatorial interpretation of secret sharing schemes

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Advances in Cryptology — ASIACRYPT'94 (ASIACRYPT 1994)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 917))

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Abstract

In a perfect secret sharing scheme, it is known that log2 ¦V i ¦ ≥H(S), where S is a secret and V i is the share of user i. On the other hand, log2 ¦Ŝ¦ ≥H(S), where Ŝ is the domain of S. The equality holds if and only if S is uniformly distributed. Therefore, if S is uniformly distributed, we have ¦V i ¦≥¦Ŝ¦. However, if S is not uniformly distributed, log2 ¦Ŝ¦> H(S). In this case, we have log2¦V i ¦≥H(S) <log2¦Ŝ¦. Then, which is bigger, ¦Vi¦ or ¦Ŝ¦? The answer is not known.

In this paper, we first prove that ¦V i ¦ >-¦Ŝ¦ for any distribution of S by using a combinatorial argument. This is a more sharp lower bound on ¦V i ¦ for not uniformly distributed S. Our proof makes it intuitively clear why ¦V i ¦ must be so large, also. Further, we show an extension of our combinatorial technique for some access structures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 O-okayama, Meguro-ku, 152, Tokyo, Japan

    Kaoru Kurosawa & Koji Okada

Authors
  1. Kaoru Kurosawa
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  2. Koji Okada
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Josef Pieprzyk Reihanah Safavi-Naini

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© 1995 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Kurosawa, K., Okada, K. (1995). Combinatorial interpretation of secret sharing schemes. In: Pieprzyk, J., Safavi-Naini, R. (eds) Advances in Cryptology — ASIACRYPT'94. ASIACRYPT 1994. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 917. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0000424

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0000424

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-59339-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49236-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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