Secret sharing schemes from binary linear codes

Abstract

In principle, every linear code can be used to construct a secret sharing scheme. However, in general, determining the access structure of the scheme is very hard. On the other hand, finding error correcting codes that produce secret sharing schemes with efficient access structures is also difficult. In this paper, we study a set of minimal codewords for certain classes of binary linear codes, and then determine the access structure of secret sharing schemes based on these codes. Furthermore, we prove that the secret sharing schemes obtained are democratic in the sense that every participant is involved in the same number of minimal access sets. © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.