In
cryptography, secret sharing refers to any method for distributing a
secret amongst a group of participants, each of which is allocated a share of the secret. The secret can only be reconstructed when the shares are combined together; individual shares are of no use on their own.
More formally, in a secret sharing scheme there is one dealer and n players. The dealer gives a secret to the players, but only when specific conditions are fulfilled. The dealer accomplishes this by giving each player a share in such a way that any group of t (for threshold) or more players can together reconstruct the secret but no group of fewer than t players can. Such a system is called a (t, n)-threshold scheme (sometimes it is written as an (n, t)-threshold scheme).
Secret sharing was invented by both
Adi Shamir and
George Blakley independently in
1979.