Efficient, XOR-based, ideal (T, n)−threshold schemes

Abstract

We propose a new, lightweight (t, n)−threshold secret sharing scheme that can be implemented using only XOR operations. Our scheme is based on an idea extracted from a patent application by Hewlett Packard that utilises error correction codes. Our scheme improves on the patent by requiring fewer randomly generated bits and by reducing the size of shares given to each player, thereby making the scheme ideal. We provide a security proof and efficiency analysis. We compare our scheme to existing schemes in the literature and show that our scheme is more efficient than other schemes, especially when t is large.