An Introduction to Secret Sharing: A Systematic Overview and Guide for Protocol Selection

Description

This book provides an introduction to secret sharing, a key technology for practical applications and higher-level cryptographic protocols.  This survey analyzes existing work, and systematically presents secret sharing protocols for various adversary models. It provides intuitive as well as formal descriptions of the different types of adversaries, including their computational powers and capabilities. In addition, it then offers guidance and support in selecting the appropriate type of protocol for a given application domain, present representative protocols, and provide useful references for further reading and research.  This book aims to support software developers and engineers in realizing highly secure cloud-based applications, and also provides an introduction to the field including some relevant technical background for interested students and computer scientists. Preface Acknowledgements Contents Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 A Primer on Secret Sharing 1.2 Applications 1.2.1 Distributed Storage 1.2.2 Multiparty Computation Chapter 2 Preliminaries 2.1 Notation 2.2 Mathematical Background and Complexity Assumptions 2.3 Basic Cryptographic Primitives 2.3.1 Hash Functions 2.3.2 Symmetric Encryption Schemes 2.3.3 Message Authentication Codes 2.3.4 Commitment Schemes 2.3.5 Zero-Knowledge Proofs of Knowledge Chapter 3 Adversary Models for Secret Sharing Schemes 3.1 Computational Power 3.2 Network Model 3.3 Protocol Level Chapter 4 Basic Secret Sharing 4.1 Perfectly Private Secret Sharing 4.1.1 Additive and Replicated Secret Sharing 4.1.2 Shamir Secret Sharing 4.2 Computationally Private Secret Sharing 4.3 Ramp Secret Sharing Chapter 5 Beyond Threshold Access Structures 5.1 Additive Secret Sharing for Generic Access Structures 5.2 Compartmented Secret Sharing 5.3 Hierarchical Secret Sharing 5.3.1 Defining Thresholds on Different Levels 5.3.2 Enforcing Participants from Higher Levels 5.3.3 Other Hierarchical Access Structures Chapter 6 Robust Secret Sharing 6.1 Unconditionally Secure Solutions 6.2 Computationally Secure Approaches Chapter 7 Verifiable Secret Sharing 7.1 Verifiable Secret Sharing in Synchronous Networks 7.1.1 High Efficiency if Only Few Servers are Corrupted 7.1.2 Higher Security Comes at a Price 7.1.3 Publicly Verifiable Secret Sharing 7.2 Verifiable Secret Sharing in Asynchronous Networks Chapter 8 Proactive Secret Sharing 8.1 Proactive Secret Sharing in Synchronous Networks 8.2 Proactive Secret Sharing in Asynchronous Networks Chapter 9 Advanced Topics 9.1 Function and Homomorphic Secret Sharing 9.2 Rational and Social Secret Sharing Chapter 10 Conclusions References