AWERProcedia Information Technology & Computer Science 1 (2012) 1656-1662 2 nd World Conference on Information Technology (WCIT-2011) Application of Secret Sharing Scheme with MDS Codes Defined over ) 2 ( n GF Derya ARDA a * , ErcaŶ BULUŞ b a Department of Computer Engineering, University of Trakya, Edirne 22180, Turkey b DepaƌtŵeŶt of Coŵputeƌ EŶgiŶeeƌiŶg, UŶiǀeƌsity of Naŵık Keŵal, Çoƌlu, ϱϵϴϲ0, Tuƌkey Abstract Secret Sharing Scheme is a technique developed for secret information like cryptographic keys and aims to increase the security against attacks by dividing the secret key into pieces and distribute the pieces to different persons in a group so that certain subsets of the group can get together to recover the key. This notion was first proposed by Shamir and Blakley in 1979. Actually they gave threshold secret sharing scheme. Since then, many constructions have been proposed. One of them is based on coding theory. In this paper, we present an application of the (k, n) threshold secret sharing scheme using (n+1, k) MDS (Maximum Distance Separable) codes, which is defined over ) 2 ( n GF . It is also shown that at least k participants of a set of n participants are needed to reconstruct the secret. Keywords: Secret sharing scheme, Cryptography, Coding theory, MDS codes Selection and peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Hafize Keser. ©2012 Academic World Education & Research Center. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Fast, correct and secure transmission of digital information have become more important issue nowadays since communication systems are crucial for daily life. Coding theory is used to examine the characteristics of * ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE: Derya Arda, Department of Computer Engineering, University of Trakya, 22180, Turkey E-mail address: deryaa@trakya.edu.tr / Tel.: +0-533-524-0275