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Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme

ericrafaloff.com

1–10 of 46 posts

Re: Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme

#2
This is really fun, I love it. One could devise a whole game around that. Define functions that give you coordinates on a sphere (in this case, the earth), where X (e.g. the "treasure") is hidden. Then plot the functions, make k shares and make them (and mod p) discoverable through different other games (e.g. programming challenges). Then the first person to win all k-1 challenges and mod p is able to interpolate the exact location of the "treasure". A wonderful mix of maths, programming and real world adventure.

Re: Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme

#4

This is very very very old (not the link, but SSSS). I wonder why did it pop in HN today.

I’m not the one who posted it, but based on the number of folks who I’ve talked to unaware of SSSS, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone recently learned and decided to share the knowledge.

Re: Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme

#5
Shamir's Secret Sharing is probably my favourite algorithm for showing the deep relationship between algebra and cryptography. The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra is a relatively straightforward result to show to a layperson, and Shamir's is basically as direct an application of it as you could want.

Then the part where using integers leaks information, and how to attack that, gets a bit hairier but is still a moderately accessible way to show cryptanalysis in practice. The fix using finite fields is then probably a step too far for most laypeople, and can be used as a lesson in how the fundamentals can be simple, but the devil is in the details.

Re: Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme

#8
post #5

Shamir's Secret Sharing is probably my favourite algorithm for showing the deep relationship between algebra and cryptography. The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra is a relatively straightforward result to show to a layperson, and Shamir's is basically as direct an application of it as you could want. Then the part where using integers leaks information, and how to attack that, gets a bit hairier but is still a moderat…

Finite fields can be explained to laypeople as arithmetic on a clock (with a prime number of hours), so additions and multiplications wrap around.

Re: Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme

#9
post #5

Shamir's Secret Sharing is probably my favourite algorithm for showing the deep relationship between algebra and cryptography. The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra is a relatively straightforward result to show to a layperson, and Shamir's is basically as direct an application of it as you could want. Then the part where using integers leaks information, and how to attack that, gets a bit hairier but is still a moderat…

Finite fields can be explained to laypeople as arithmetic on a clock (with a prime number of hours), so additions and multiplications wrap around.

Sure, but the whys and wherefores of how they fix the security issues in SSS are harder.

Re: Shamir’s Secret Sharing Scheme

#10

I would expect this relates to Hashicorp's Vault product. It's gaining some notoriety and employs Shamir's secrets to seal/unseal the main vault.

Which sucks when it's 2am and you start blowing up a majority of shard holders phones to unseal it because it sealed itself causing a critical outage.
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