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arXiv:2505.04076 · IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security

Secret Sharing Schemes From Correlated Random Variables and Rate-Limited Public Communication

Rumia Sultana, Rémi A. Chou

Published Jan 1, 2026• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A dealer aims to share a secret with participants so that only predefined subsets can reconstruct it, while others learn nothing. The dealer and participants access correlated randomness and communicate over a one-way, public, rate-limited channel. For this problem, we propose the first explicit coding scheme able to handle arbitrary access structures and achieve the best known achievable rates, previously obtained non-constructively. Our construction relies on lossy source coding coupled with distribution approximation to handle the reliability constraints, followed by universal hashing to handle the security constraints. We stress that our coding scheme does not require symmetry or degradation assumptions on the correlated random variables, and does not need a pre-shared secret among the participants and dealer. As a by-product, our construction also yields explicit coding schemes for secret-key generation under one-way, rate-limited public communication that, unlike prior work, achieves the capacity for arbitrary source correlations and do not require a pre-shared secret to ensure strong secrecy.

DOI
10.1109/tifs.2026.3657030

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A dealer aims to share a secret with participants so that only predefined subsets can reconstruct it, while others learn nothing. The dealer and participants access correlated randomness and communicate over a one-way, public, rate-limited channel. For this problem, we propose the first explicit coding scheme able to handle arbitrary access structures and achieve the best known achievable rates, previously obtained non-constructively. Our construction relies on lossy source coding coupled with distribution approximation to handle the reliability constraints, followed by universal hashing to handle the security constraints. We stress that our coding scheme does not require symmetry or degradation assumptions on the correlated random variables, and does not need a pre-shared secret among the participants and dealer. As a by-product, our construction also yields explicit coding schemes for secret-key generation under one-way, rate-limited public communication that, unlike prior work, achieves the capacity for arbitrary source correlations and do not require a pre-shared secret to ensure strong secrecy.
We study common randomness where two parties have access to i.i.d. samples from a known random source, and wish to generate a shared random key using limited (or no) communication with the largest possible probability of agreement. This problem is at the core of secret key generation in cryptography, with connections to communication under uncertainty and locality sensitive hashing. We take the approach of treating correlated sources as a critical resource, and ask whether common randomness can be generated resource-efficiently. We consider two notable sources in this setup arising from correlated bits and correlated Gaussians. We design the first explicit schemes that use only a polynomial number of samples (in the key length) so that the players can generate shared keys that agree with constant probability using optimal communication. The best previously known schemes were both non-constructive and used an exponential number of samples. In the amortized setting, we characterize the largest achievable ratio of key length to communication in terms of the external and internal information costs, two well-studied quantities in theoretical computer science. In the relaxed setting where the two parties merely wish to improve the correlation between the generated keys of length k, we show that there are no interactive protocols using o(k) bits of communication having agreement probability even as small as 2–o(k). For the related communication problem where the players wish to compute a joint function f of their inputs using i.i.d samples from a known source, we give a simultaneous message passing protocol using 2O(c) bits where c is the interactive randomized public-coin communication complexity of f. This matches the lower bound shown previously while the best previously known upper bound was doubly exponential in c. Our schemes reveal a new connection between common randomness and unbiased error-correcting codes, e.g., dual-BCH codes and their analogues in Euclidean space.
In the classical secret-key generation model, common randomness is generated by two terminals based on the observation of correlated components of a common source, while keeping it secret from a non-legitimate observer. It is assumed that the statistics of the source are known to all participants. In this paper, the secret-key generation based on a compound source is studied where the realization of the source statistic is unknown. The protocol should guarantee the security and reliability of the generated secret-key, simultaneously for all possible realizations of the compound source. A single-letter lower-bound of the secret-key capacity for a finite compound source is derived as a function of the public communication rate constraint. A multi-letter capacity formula is further computed for a finite compound source for the case in which the public communication is unconstrained. Finally, a single-letter capacity formula is derived for a degraded compound source with an arbitrary (possibly infinite) set of source states and a finite set of marginal states.
In this paper, we study the problem of secret key generation with one-way communication, where in addition to the rate limited public channel, which can be observed by both Bob and Eve, we add a secure channel, which only connects Alice and Bob. In this model, we do not pose any constraints on the sources, i.e. Bob is not degraded to or less noisy than Eve. We propose an achievability scheme, and we also suggest a converse, which meets the achievability. Therefore, we obtain the secret key capacity for this model.
In the classical secret-key generation model, common randomness is generated by two terminals based on the observation of correlated components of a common source, while keeping it secret from a non-legitimate observer. It is assumed that the statistics of the source are known to all participants. In this paper, the secret-key generation based on a compound source is studied where the realization of the source statistic is unknown. The protocol should guarantee the security and reliability of the generated secret-key, simultaneously for all possible realizations of the compound source. A single-letter lower-bound of the secret-key capacity for a finite compound source is derived as a function of the public communication rate constraint. A multi-letter capacity formula is further computed for a finite compound source for the case in which the public communication is unconstrained. Finally, a single-letter capacity formula is derived for a degraded compound source with an arbitrary (possibly infinite) set of source states and a finite set of marginal states.
We extend the problem of secure source coding by considering a remote source whose noisy measurements are correlated random variables used for secure source reconstruction. The main additions to the problem are as follows: (1) all terminals noncausally observe a noisy measurement of the remote source; (2) a private key is available to all legitimate terminals; (3) the public communication link between the encoder and decoder is rate-limited; and (4) the secrecy leakage to the eavesdropper is measured with respect to the encoder input, whereas the privacy leakage is measured with respect to the remote source. Exact rate regions are characterized for a lossy source coding problem with a private key, remote source, and decoder side information under security, privacy, communication, and distortion constraints. By replacing the distortion constraint with a reliability constraint, we obtain the exact rate region for the lossless case as well. Furthermore, the lossy rate region for scalar discrete-time Gaussian sources and measurement channels is established. An achievable lossy rate region that can be numerically computed is also provided for binary-input multiple additive discrete-time Gaussian noise measurement channels.
The distributed source coding problem is extended by positing that noisy measurements of a remote source are the correlated random variables that should be reconstructed at another terminal. We consider a secure and private distributed lossy source coding problem with two encoders and one decoder such that (i) all terminals noncausally observe a noisy measurement of the remote source; (ii) a private key is available to each legitimate encoder and all private keys are available to the decoder; (iii) rate-limited noiseless communication links are available between each encoder and the decoder; (iv) the amount of information leakage to an eavesdropper about the correlated random variables is defined assecrecyleakage, andprivacyleakage is measured with respect to the remote source; and (v) two passive attack scenarios are considered, where a strong eavesdropper can access both communication links and a weak eavesdropper can choose only one of the links to access. Inner and outer bounds on the rate regions defined under secrecy, privacy, communication, and distortion constraints are derived for both passive attack scenarios. When one or both sources should be reconstructed reliably, the rate region bounds are simplified.