In the paper we propose a general, abstract framework for Automatic Secret Generation and Sharing (ASGS) that should be independent of underlying Secret Sharing Scheme (SSS). ASGS allows to prevent the Dealer from knowing the secret. The Basic Property Conjecture (BPC) forms the base of the framework. Due to the level of abstraction, results are portable into the realm of quantum computing. Two situations are discussed. First concerns simultaneous generation and sharing of the random, prior nonexistent secret. Such a secret remains unknown until it is reconstructed. Next, we propose the framework for automatic sharing of a known secret. In this case the Dealer does not know the secret and the secret Owner does not know the shares. We present opportunities for joining ASGS with other extended capabilities, with special emphasis on PVSS and pre-positioned secret sharing. Finally, we illustrate framework with practical implementation.
In the paper we propose a general, abstract framework for Automatic Secret Generation and Sharing (ASGS) that should be independent of underlying Secret Sharing Scheme (SSS). ASGS allows to prevent the Dealer from knowing the secret. The Basic Property Conjecture (BPC) forms the base of the framework. Due to the level of abstraction, results are portable into the realm of quantum computing. Two situations are discussed. First concerns simultaneous generation and sharing of the random, prior nonexistent secret. Such a secret remains unknown until it is reconstructed. Next, we propose the framework for automatic sharing of a known secret. In this case the Dealer does not know the secret and the secret Owner does not know the shares. We present opportunities for joining ASGS with other extended capabilities, with special emphasis on PVSS and pre-positioned secret sharing. Finally, we illustrate framework with practical implementation.
Quantum secret sharing (QSS) allows a dealer to distribute a secret quantum state among a set of parties in such a way that certain authorized subsets can reconstruct the secret, while unauthorized subsets obtain no information about it. Previous works on QSS for general access structures focused solely on the existence of perfectly secure schemes, and the share size of the known schemes is necessarily exponential even in cases where the access structure is computed by polynomial size monotone circuits. This stands in stark contrast to the classical setting, where polynomial-time computationally-secure secret sharing schemes have been long known for all access structures computed by polynomial-size monotone circuits under standard hardness assumptions, and one can even obtain shares which are much shorter than the secret (which is impossible with perfect security). While QSS was introduced over twenty years ago, previous works only considered information-theoretic privacy. In this work, we initiate the study of computationally-secure QSS and show that computational assumptions help significantly in building QSS schemes, just as in the classical case. We present a simple compiler and use it to obtain a large variety results: We construct polynomial-time computationally-secure QSS schemes under standard hardness assumptions for a rich class of access structures. This includes many access structures for which previous results in QSS necessarily required exponential share size. In fact, we can go even further: We construct QSS schemes for which the size of the quantum shares is significantly smaller than the size of the secret. As in the classical setting, this is impossible with perfect security. We also apply our compiler to obtain results beyond computational QSS. In the information-theoretic setting, we improve the share size of perfect QSS schemes for a large class of n-party access structures to 1.5^{n+o(n)}, improving upon best known schemes and matching the best known result for general access structures in the classical setting. Finally, among other things, we study the class of access structures which can be efficiently implemented when the quantum secret sharing scheme has access to a given number of copies of the secret, including all such functions in 𝖯 and NP.
Quantum secret sharing (QSS) allows a dealer to distribute a secret quantum state among a set of parties so that certain subsets can reconstruct the secret, while unauthorized subsets obtain no information. While QSS was introduced over twenty years ago, previous works focused only on existence of perfectly secure schemes, and the share size of the known schemes is exponential even for access structures computed by polynomial size monotone circuits. This stands in contrast to the classical case, where efficient computationally-secure schemes have been long known for all access structures in monotoneP, and one can even obtain shares which are much shorter than the secret which is impossible with perfect security. In this work, we initiate the study of computationally-secure QSS and show that computational assumptions help significantly in building QSS schemes. We present a simple compiler and use it to obtain a large variety results: We construct polynomial-time QSS schemes under standard assumptions for a rich class of access structures. This includes many access structures for which previous results in QSS required exponential share size. We also construct QSS schemes for which the size of the shares is significantly smaller than the size of the secret. As in the classical case, this is impossible with perfect security. We also use our compiler to obtain results beyond computational QSS. In the information-theoretic setting, we improve the share size of perfect QSS schemes for a large class of access structures to 1.5n+o(n), improving upon best known schemes and matching the best known result for general access structures in the classical case. Finally, we show construct efficient schemes for all access structures in P and NP when the quantum secret sharing scheme is given multiple of copies of the secret.
The security of a secret sharing protocol is compromised if one or more dishonest participants can reconstruct the secret by deviating from the prescribed protocol, particularly when such malicious behavior remains undetected. Semi-Quantum Secret Sharing (SQSS) is a variant of secret sharing in which the participants possess only classical capabilities, such as preparing and measuring qubits in the computational (Z) basis, while a quantum-capable third party assists the dealer in generating and distributing quantum shares of a classical secret. The limited quantum capabilities of the participants in SQSS protocols may introduce vulnerabilities to collusion attacks, enabling an assisting quantum third party, in collaboration with a dishonest classical participant, to jointly recover the secret even without detection. In this work, we propose a novel SQSS protocol that eliminates this vulnerability and achieves information-theoretic security against collusion attacks. We further prove that the proposed protocol is secure against a broad class of external and internal attacks. Finally, a comparative analysis demonstrates that our construction advances existing SQSS protocols by simultaneously optimizing qubit efficiency, involves a classical dealer, and resilience against DCNA attacks using basic Bell states.
We present a new framework for constructing practically efficient publicly verifiable secret sharing (PVSS) with non-interactive dealers , in that the dealer may go offline after sending a single message, and is not involved in the share verification process. We use identity-based encryption (IBE) and commitments as the main ingredients and avoid expensive zero-knowledge proofs. By instantiating them with post-quantum secure schemes, a lattice-based IBE and a hash-based commitment, we obtain our first construction: a post-quantum secure PVSS with non-interactive dealers that outperforms the prior lattice-based practical construction by Gentry et al. [Eurocrypt 2022]. However, to enable the aggregation of PVSS transcripts (which facilitates many additional applications such as secure voting), we propose our second construction by replacing hash-based commitments with Pedersen's homomorphic commitments. While this does not achieve full-fledged post-quantum security (as Pedersen's scheme is not quantum safe), it still provides privacy against a post-quantum adversary. We prove the security of this construction in a new model, which we call long-lasting security. This model guarantees that the protocol is secure in the present (pre-quantum era) while maintaining privacy in the long term (post-quantum era). This new model is of independent interest for constructing efficient schemes that are resilient to the harvest-now-decrypt-later line of attacks. In this model, we propose a blockchain-compatible secure voting scheme using our PVSS scheme. Our PVSS schemes demonstrate practical efficiency: our post-quantum PVSS shares a secret among 1024 receivers in 667 ms and verifies the dealing in < 5 ms, and communicates 4.4MB, overall whereas the state of the art [Gentry et al., Eurocrypt 2022] communicates 251MB and requires 2060s for dealing the secret.
Abstract With the rapid development of quantum computing, traditional encryption methods face growing security threats. Quantum Secret Sharing (QSS) has emerged as a promising solution, using quantum principles to improve communication security and prevent internal and external attacks. This study proposes a new (t, n) Threshold Quantum Secret Sharing (TQSS) protocol based on single-qubit unitary operations and Lagrange interpolation. The protocol allows secret reconstruction without third-party or dealer assistance and remains efficient even when some participants are absent. To address more complex real-world scenarios, we extend our previously proposed (t, n) TQSS protocol into a Conditional Dynamic TQSS (CDTQSS). This approach uses resource-based share splitting to allow new participants to join without requiring the dealer to redistribute information. However, the protocol is ‘conditional’ because existing participants must take on extra responsibility-they must assist in generating shares for new members and also participate in the secret reconstruction process together with them. The protocol maintains strong security, reduces resource consumption, and offers better flexibility, making it well-suited for practical and dynamic quantum communication needs.
In this work we focus on two basic secure distributed computation tasks- Probabilistic Weak Secret Sharing (PWSS) and Probabilistic Verifiable Secret Sharing (PVSS). PVSS allows a dealer to share a secret among several players in a way that would later allow a unique reconstruction of the secret with negligible error probability. PWSS is slightly weaker version of PVSS where the dealer can choose not to disclose his secret later. Both of them are well-studied problems. While PVSS is used as a building block in every general probabilistic secure multiparty computation, PWSS can be used as a building block for PVSS protocols. Both these problems can be parameterized by the number of players (n) and the fault tolerance threshold (t) which bounds the total number of malicious (Byzantine) players having unbounded computing power. We focus on the standard secure channel model, where all players have access to secure point-topoint channels and a common broadcast medium. We show the following for PVSS: (a) 1-round PVSS is possible iff t = 1 and n> 3 (b) 2-round PVSS is possible if n> 3t (c) 4-round PVSS is possible if n> 2t. For the PWSS we show the following: (a) 1-round PWSS is possible iff n> 3t and (b) 3-round PWSS is possible if n> 2t. All our protocols are efficient. Comparing our results with the existing trade-off results for perfect (zero error probability) VSS and WSS, we find that probabilistically relaxing the conditions of VSS/WSS helps to increase fault tolerance significantly.