Skip to main content
Log in

A Linear Construction of Secret Sharing Schemes

  • Published:
Designs, Codes and Cryptography Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this paper, we will generalize the vector space construction due to Brickell. This generalization, introduced by Bertilsson, leads to secret sharing schemes with rational information rates in which the secret can be computed efficiently by each qualified group. A one to one correspondence between the generalized construction and linear block codes is stated, and a matrix characterization of the generalized construction is presented. It turns out that the approach of minimal codewords by Massey is a special case of this construction. For general access structures we present an outline of an algorithm for determining whether a rational number can be realized as information rate by means of the generalized vector space construction. If so, the algorithm produces a secret sharing scheme with this information rate.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Michael Bertilsson, Linear Codes and Secret Sharing, PhD thesis, Linköping University (1993).

  2. Michael Bertilsson and Ingemar Ingemarsson, A construction of practical secret sharing schemes using linear block codes, in Advances in Cryptology—Auscrypt '92, (1992) pp. 67–79.

  3. G. R. Blakley and G. A. Kabatianskii, Linear algebra approach to secret sharing schemes, PreProceedings of Workshop on Information Protection, Moscow, December (1993).

  4. C. Blundo, Secret Sharing Schemes for Access Structures based on Graphs, Tesi di Laurea, (in Italian) (1991).

  5. C. Blundo, A. De Santis, D. R. Stinson, and U. Vaccaro, Graph decompositions and secret sharing schemes, in Advances in Cryptology—Proceedings of Eurocrypt '92, Lecture Notes in Comput. Sci., Vol. 658 (1993) pp. 1–24.

  6. E. F. Brickell, Some ideal secret sharing schemes, J. Combin. Math. and Combin. Comput., Vol. 9 (1989) pp. 105–113.

    Google Scholar 

  7. E. F. Brickell and D. R. Stinson, Some improved bounds on the information rate of perfect secret sharing schemes, J. Cryptology, Vol. 5 (1992) pp. 153–166.

    Google Scholar 

  8. R. M. Capocelli, A. De Santis, L. Gargano, and U. Vaccaro, On the size of shares for secret sharing schemes, J. Cryptology, Vol. 6 (1993) pp. 157–167.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Marten van Dijk, The optimal linear worst-case information rate, submitted to Designs, Codes and Cryptography, (1996).

  10. Marten van Dijk, A Linear Construction of Perfect Secret Sharing Schemes, Proc. of Eurocrypt'94, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, LNCS 950 (1995) pp. 23–34.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Marten van Dijk, On the information rate of perfect secret sharing schemes, Designs, Codes, and Cryptography, Vol. 6 (1995) pp. 143–169.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Marten van Dijk, W.-A. Jackson, and K. M. Martin, A duality theorem for incomplete secret sharing schemes, Bulletin of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Application, Vol. 19 (1997) pp. 93–101.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Marten van Dijk, W.-A. Jackson, and K. M. Martin, A general decomposition construction for incomplete secret sharing schemes, submitted to Designs, Codes and Cryptography, (1995).

  14. R. G. Gallager, Information Theory and Reliable Communications, John Wiley, New York (1968).

    Google Scholar 

  15. W.-A. Jackson and K. Martin, Geometric secret sharing schemes and their duals, Designs, Codes and Cryptography, Vol. 4 (1994) pp. 83–95.

    Google Scholar 

  16. W.-A. Jackson and K. M. Martin, Perfect secret sharing schemes on five participants, to appear in Designs, Codes and Cryptography.

  17. Peter Lancaster and Miron Tismenetsky, The Theory of Matrices, Academic Press (1985).

  18. K. M. Martin, Discrete Structures in the Theory of Secret Sharing. PhD thesis, Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London (1991).

  19. K. M. Martin, New secret sharing schemes from old, Journal of Combin. Math. and Combin. Comput., Vol. 14 (1993) pp. 65–77.

    Google Scholar 

  20. James L. Massey, Minimal codewords and secret sharing, Proc. 6th Joint Swedish-Russian Int. Workshop on Inf. Th. 1993, (1993) pp. 276–279.

  21. G. S. Simmons, W.-A. Jackson, and K. Martin, The geometry of shared secret schemes, Bulletin of the Institute of Combinatorics and its Application, (1991) pp. 71–88.

  22. D. R. Stinson, An explication of secret sharing schemes, Designs, Codes and Cryptography, Vol. 2 (1992) pp. 357–390.

    Google Scholar 

  23. D. R. Stinson, New general lower bounds on the information rate of secret sharing schemes, Advances in Cryptology—CRYPTO '92, Lecture Notes in Comput. Sci., Vol. 740 (1993) pp. 168–182.

  24. D. R. Stinson, Decomposition constructions for secret sharing schemes, IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, Vol. IT-40 (1994) pp. 118–125.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Dijk, M.v. A Linear Construction of Secret Sharing Schemes. Designs, Codes and Cryptography 12, 161–201 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008259214236

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008259214236

Navigation