Re:Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
by marzell on Saturday September 16, 2023 @01:32PM
(#37536802)
What's the practical benefit over just sharding a decryption key and handing out multiple shards to each person?
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Re:Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
by armada651 on Saturday September 16, 2023 @01:33PM
(#37536813)
1. You need all the shards of the key to decrypt the text instead of just reaching a threshold.
2. The full encrypted text is available to each person, making it vulnerable to a brute force attack at some point in the far future.
Re:Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
by marzell on Saturday September 16, 2023 @01:54PM
(#37537001)
The second point, yeah that's relevant.
On the first point, just give each person n-1 shards, each missing a different one. Then any 2 can decrypt. Or configure it for however many participants there are and they minimum number needed to encrypt.
Re:Horcrux: Split your file into encrypted fragments
by d-z-m on Saturday September 16, 2023 @02:36PM
(#37537355)
The key part about Shamir is that having any number of shards short of the threshold doesn't reveal anything about the secret. Let's say you split your 256 bit encryption key into 4 64-bit pieces with each person getting 3 of the 4. Each person now knows 3/4 of the secret. Now any one person simply has to brute force the remaining 64 bits of the key in order to decrypt.