A Move to Secure Data by Scattering the Pieces

uler writes "The NY Times has an article about an interesting new open source storage project. Unlike data storage mechanisms today that work 'by making multiple copies of data,' the Cleversafe software takes an 'approach based on dispersing data in encrypted slices.' It's an elegant solution and one that's been a long time coming: the software uses algorithmic techniques known by mathematicians since the 70's. Adi Shamir (of RSA) first wrote of information dispersal is his 1979 paper 'How to Share a Secret (pdf).'"

Comments

Freenet?

[BigZaphod]

Isn't this basically what freenet does? It encrypts the data into chunks and spreads it around all over the place.

I was working on a p2p system that worked in a similar manner. I was even thinking of repurposing it for the sake of doing online backups - but frankly the bandwidth just doesn't seem to be there yet to do that sort of thing in a practical manner. That, and I got bored with the project... (but nevermind that). :-)

Re:aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhh!

[Red Flayer]

It's '70s not 70's.

Not really -- it should be '70s' in all likelihood. The first apostrophe is to represent the missing "19", the second is to denote the possessive that is implied. The term "the 1970's" is a shortening of "the years of the decade we call the 1970s," or "the 1970s' years."

This gets messy, however, since the word 'years' is implied, and to say during the '70s' will make people wonder which 70 seconds you're talking about, and why it needs to be encapsulated with apostrophes -- is it an idiomatical 70 seconds? Kinda like the Biblical '40 days'?

For that matter, if you really want to get pedantic, what's the use of referencing the 70s at all if you're not going to bother denoting the scale? I mean, surely not mentioning that it's AD (or CE) is going to confuse people using other calendars... more so than misusing an apostrophe, right?

Along the same lines, it's just horrific that they'd abbreviate the decade anyway, how are we to know that the writer didn't intend the 1870s, or the 2070s even, if he happens to be living backwards in time?

Bah, there are grammatical rules, and it's great if everyone follows them, but really, it makes no difference if he spelled it 70's, '70s, or seventies (which is the proper spelling, btw).

Sharing a secret in the offline world

[davidwr]

A friend taught me this. The secret in his case was a proprietary industrial process.

You take the secret and divide it into 3 pieces. You have a team of 3 people to each carry or memorize two of the 3 pieces.

Amy carries pieces 1 and 2
Bob carries pieces 2 and 3
Charlie carries pieces 3 and 1

If any one of them is compromised by bribery or other means, 1) the information is not lost and 2) the enemy has only an incomplete picture of what is going on.

This can be extended to more people to achieve greater redundancy or less exposure:

More redundancy: 4 people with 4 peices, each person knows 3 elements. Any 2 of 4 people needed to put the pieces together.

Less exposure: 4 people with 4 pieces, each knows 2 elements. Any 3 of 4 people needed to put the pieces together. Loss of 1 person exposes 1/2 of the total secret.

There's no reason to stop with 4 people and 4 pieces.

Think of this as RAID for human-knowledge.