Re: Question about Shamir secret sharing scheme
On Sat, Oct 03, 2009 at 02:42:14AM -0400, Kevin W. Wall wrote: The secret S can then be computed by finding f(0) more or less by using Lagrangian interpolation on the t shares, the points (i, Si). The question that a colleague and I have is there any cryptographic purpose of computing the independent coefficients over the finite field, Zp ? The only reason that we can see to doing this is to keep the sizes of the shares Si bounded within some reasonable range and it seems as though one could just do something like allowing T choose random coefficients from a sufficient # of bytes and just do all the calculations without the 'mod p' stuff. Lagrange interpolation works for polynomials over a field. The most convenient *finite* fields in this context are the Z_p for prime p. In this context it is also easy to make a uniform choice of a random coefficient and to quantify the work-factor for a brute-force attack. With rationals, everything is much messier. There is no good reason to work over Q. We thought perhaps Shamir did the calculations of Zp because things like Java's BigInteger or BigDecimal weren't widely available when came up with this scheme back in 1979. An algorithm is not the same an implementation. There was no Java back then either, and people still somehow wrote working code in '79. -- /\ ASCII RIBBON NOTICE: If received in error, \ / CAMPAIGN Victor Duchovni please destroy and notify X AGAINST IT Security, sender. Sender does not waive / \ HTML MAILMorgan Stanley confidentiality or privilege, and use is prohibited. - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Question about Shamir secret sharing scheme
Kevin W. Wall wrote: Hi list...I have a question about Shamir's secret sharing. According to the _Handbook of Applied Cryptography_ Shamir’s secret sharing (t,n) threshold scheme works as follows: SUMMARY: a trusted party distributes shares of a secret S to n users. RESULT: any group of t users which pool their shares can recover S. The trusted party T begins with a secret integer S ≥ 0 it wishes to distribute among n users. (a) T chooses a prime p max(S, n), and defines a0 = S. (b) T selects t−1 random, independent coefficients defining the random polynomial over Zp. (c) T computes Si = f(i) mod p, 1 ≤ i ≤ n (or for any n distinct points i, 1 ≤ i ≤ p − 1), and securely transfers the share Si to user Pi , along with public index i. The secret S can then be computed by finding f(0) more or less by using Lagrangian interpolation on the t shares, the points (i, Si). The question that a colleague and I have is there any cryptographic purpose of computing the independent coefficients over the finite field, Zp ? Yes, the information-theoretic security of the scheme depends on performing the arithmetic in a finite field, and on the coefficients being chosen randomly and independently in that field. In Shamir's original paper: http://www.caip.rutgers.edu/~virajb/readinglist/shamirturing.pdf the statement that By construction, these p possible polynomials are equally likely depends on these conditions. I believe any finite field will work, but Zp is the simplest option. [Incidentally, if you're implementing this from Handbook of Applied Cryptography, there's an erratum for that section (12.71): of degree at most t in the paragraph after the Mechanism should be of degree less than t.] -- David-Sarah Hopwood ⚥ http://davidsarah.livejournal.com - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Question about Shamir secret sharing scheme
On Oct 3, 2009, at 2:42 AM, Kevin W. Wall wrote: Hi list...I have a question about Shamir's secret sharing. According to the _Handbook of Applied Cryptography_ Shamir’s secret sharing (t,n) threshold scheme works as follows: SUMMARY: a trusted party distributes shares of a secret S to n users. RESULT: any group of t users which pool their shares can recover S. The trusted party T begins with a secret integer S ≥ 0 it wishes to distribute among n users. (a) T chooses a prime p max(S, n), and defines a0 = S. (b) T selects t−1 random, independent coefficients defining the random polynomial over Zp. (c) T computes Si = f(i) mod p, 1 ≤ i ≤ n (or for any n distinct points i, 1 ≤ i ≤ p − 1), and securely transfers the share Si to user Pi , along with public index i. The secret S can then be computed by finding f(0) more or less by using Lagrangian interpolation on the t shares, the points (i, Si). The question that a colleague and I have is there any cryptographic purpose of computing the independent coefficients over the finite field, Zp ? The only reason that we can see to doing this is to keep the sizes of the shares Si bounded within some reasonable range and it seems as though one could just do something like allowing T choose random coefficients from a sufficient # of bytes and just do all the calculations without the 'mod p' stuff. We thought perhaps Shamir did the calculations of Zp because things like Java's BigInteger or BigDecimal weren't widely available when came up with this scheme back in 1979. So other than perhaps compatibility with other implementations (which we are not really too concerned about) is there any reason to continue to do the calculations over Zp ??? It's nice to be able to give a size limit for the shares. They're going to need to be transmitted and stored. Since there are many primes around, working over Zp ensures that shares about about the same size as the secret. However, there's also a more fundamental problem: In step (b), how do you choose your coefficients randomly over all of Z? There is no uniform probability distribution over Z to work with. Any realistic implementation will choose from some finite subset. But then the scheme may not be completely secure: If you have the value of f() at t-1 points, the fact that the coefficients are limited to some finite set also constrains the possible values at the remaining point - and you don't know exactly how. Working over Zp's group structure ensures that if you have t-1 values, all p-1 possible remaining values are equally likely, so you've learned nothing. -- Jerry - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
Re: Question about Shamir secret sharing scheme
Kevin W. Wall asks about Shamir sharing: The question that a colleague and I have is there any cryptographic purpose of computing the independent coefficients over the finite field, Zp ? Yes, you do have to be careful to do that. You want to make sure the shares don't leak any information about the secret S. Consider the simplest case where two people are involved. Call the single random coefficient c, with secret S, then the two shares are: S + c S + 2c Now if this is mod p, and c is chosen at random mod p, then both c and 2c will be random mod p, and each perfectly hides the value of S when it is added mod p, similarly to a one-time-pad. Neither share leaks any information about the value of S. But suppose for convenience you did the math mod some power of 2 (or even just over the integers). Then 2c is going to be even, regardless of c. And seeing S + 2c will then reveal whether S is even or odd, defeating the privacy of the scheme. Hal Finney - The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending unsubscribe cryptography to majord...@metzdowd.com
