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I am looking for a way to do multi-key encryption with the set number of decryption keys. The goal is to take a file, encrypt it and generate several decryption keys, in order to decrypt several (not just one, but all either) keys must be used.

Use case:

Receive image.jpeg Generate an encrypted image.jpeg.crypt, image.jpeg.key1, image.jpeg.key2, image.jpeg.key3 Distribute keys to three different persons

After this 2 keys must be present to decrypt, but any 2 of the mentioned 3.

In perfect scenario i should be able to say: "Generate X keys, out of which Y keys will be required to decrypt".

P.S. This is not a duplicate of Encryption strategies for multi users access in production systems where any one key decrypts, nor is it a duplicate of Doubling up or cycling encryption algorithms where every key must be provided.

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v010dya
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1 Answers1

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You are looking for secret sharing algorithms. Once such scheme was proposed by Shamir, called Shamir's secret sharing algorithm.

Quoting from Wikipedia:

... a secret is divided into parts, giving each participant its own unique part, where some of the parts or all of them are needed in order to reconstruct the secret.

Adi
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Jor-el
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