Fwd: Shamir secret sharing and information theoretic security

[R.A. Hettinga]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Jonathan Katz <jkatz at cs.umd.edu>
> Date: February 20, 2009 12:34:31 PM EST
> To: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
> Cc: Cryptography <cryptography at metzdowd.com>
> Subject: Re: Shamir secret sharing and information theoretic security
>
> On Tue, 17 Feb 2009, R.A. Hettinga wrote:
>
>> hi,
>>
>>
>> I was going through the wikipedia example of shamir secret sharing  
>> which says it is information theoretically secure.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing
>> ...
>
> The scheme is defined over a finite field *not* over the integers.  
> When Shamir's scheme is run over a finite field, it is information  
> theoretically secure.