On Tue, 28 May 1996, David Vincenzetti wrote:
A number of secret-sharing/splitting programs for Unix are available at idea.sec.dsi.unimi.it/pub/crypt/code, ftp.dsi.unimi.it's new location
For instance, check idea.sec.dsi.unimi.it/pub/crypt/code/secshar.tar.gz
Disperse/Collect is a information dispersal program rather than a secret sharing program. They are similiar have different purposes. Here we want to improve accessibility and reliability without regard to secrecy. That is, for information dispersal we don't care if information about the original file is leaked with with each share, whereas secret sharing has to guarantee that an attacker can find out nothing about the original secret unless he has at least k shares. That aside, Disperse/Collect might be better suited for what Vladimir had in mind because it was explicitly designed for broadcasting files through Usenet. The secret sharing programs you mention would not work well because each share would be as big as the original secret. (There are secret sharing schemes with short shares, but I don't think any of those programs implement the more efficient schemes.) Wei Dai