26 research outputs found

    On the optimization of bipartite secret sharing schemes

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    Optimizing the ratio between the maximum length of the shares and the length of the secret value in secret sharing schemes for general access structures is an extremely difficult and long-standing open problem. In this paper, we study it for bipartite access structures, in which the set of participants is divided in two parts, and all participants in each part play an equivalent role. We focus on the search of lower bounds by using a special class of polymatroids that is introduced here, the tripartite ones. We present a method based on linear programming to compute, for every given bipartite access structure, the best lower bound that can be obtained by this combinatorial method. In addition, we obtain some general lower bounds that improve the previously known ones, and we construct optimal secret sharing schemes for a family of bipartite access structures.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

    Ideal hierarchical secret sharing schemes

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    Hierarchical secret sharing is among the most natural generalizations of threshold secret sharing, and it has attracted a lot of attention from the invention of secret sharing until nowadays. Several constructions of ideal hierarchical secret sharing schemes have been proposed, but it was not known what access structures admit such a scheme. We solve this problem by providing a natural definition for the family of the hierarchical access structures and, more importantly, by presenting a complete characterization of the ideal hierarchical access structures, that is, the ones admitting an ideal secret sharing scheme. Our characterization deals with the properties of the hierarchically minimal sets of the access structure, which are the minimal qualified sets whose participants are in the lowest possible levels in the hierarchy. By using our characterization, it can be efficiently checked whether any given hierarchical access structure that is defined by its hierarchically minimal sets is ideal. We use the well known connection between ideal secret sharing and matroids and, in particular, the fact that every ideal access structure is a matroid port. In addition, we use recent results on ideal multipartite access structures and the connection between multipartite matroids and integer polymatroids. We prove that every ideal hierarchical access structure is the port of a representable matroid and, more specifically, we prove that every ideal structure in this family admits ideal linear secret sharing schemes over fields of all characteristics. In addition, methods to construct such ideal schemes can be derived from the results in this paper and the aforementioned ones on ideal multipartite secret sharing. Finally, we use our results to find a new proof for the characterization of the ideal weighted threshold access structures that is simpler than the existing one.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

    On the representability of the biuniform matroid

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    Every biuniform matroid is representable over all sufficiently large fields. But it is not known exactly over which finite fields they are representable, and the existence of efficient methods to find a representation for every given biuniform matroid has not been proved. The interest of these problems is due to their implications to secret sharing. The existence of efficient methods to find representations for all biuniform matroids is proved here for the first time. The previously known efficient constructions apply only to a particular class of biuniform matroids, while the known general constructions were not proved to be efficient. In addition, our constructions provide in many cases representations over smaller finite fields. © 2013, Society for Industrial and Applied MathematicsPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

    On the representability of the biuniform matroid

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    Every biuniform matroid is representable over all sufficiently large fields. But it is not known exactly over which finite fields they are representable, and the existence of efficient methods to find a representation for every given biuniform matroid has not been proved. The interest of these problems is due to their implications to secret sharing. The existence of efficient methods to find representations for all biuniform matroids is proved here for the first time. The previously known efficient constructions apply only to a particular class of biuniform matroids, while the known general constructions were not proved to be efficient. In addition, our constructions provide in many cases representations over smaller finite fields. © 2013, Society for Industrial and Applied MathematicsPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

    Ideal Secret Sharing Schemes: Combinatorial Characterizations, Certain Access Structures, and Related Geometric Problems

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    An ideal secret sharing scheme is a method of sharing a secret key in some key space among a finite set of participants in such a way that only the authorized subsets of participants can reconstruct the secret key from their shares which are of the same length as that of the secret key. The set of all authorized subsets of participants is the access structure of the secret sharing scheme. In this paper, we derive several properties and restate the combinatorial characterization of an ideal secret sharing scheme in Brickell-Stinson model in terms of orthogonality of its representative array. We propose two practical models, namely the parallel and hierarchical models, for access structures, and then, by the restated characterization, we discuss sufficient conditions on finite geometries for ideal secret sharing schemes to realize these access structure models. Several series of ideal secret sharing schemes realizing special parallel or hierarchical access structure model are constructed from finite projective planes.Comment: This paper was published in 2009 in the "Journal of Statistics and Applications Vol 4, No. 2-3", which is now inaccessible and has been removed from MathSciNet. I have decided to upload the paper here for those who wish to refer to i
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