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I am trying to understand how Asmuth-Bloom's secret sharing is perfect. My "proof" so far (in a 3 out of 4 scheme):

$y=s + a * m_0 \bmod m_1 * m_2 * m_3$

Having $k-1$ shares, it will yield a valid solution for the CRT, but not a unique one. 2 shares yield $x = y' \bmod m_1 * m_2$
Therefore, we know that $y = y' + z * m_1 * m_2$ and also that $y = [0;m_1*m_2*m_3]$
But since we do not know the exact range of $y$, since $m_3$ is missing, we can not just simply guess $z$ and therefore guess $y$.
However, I see a sequence of following primes used a lot, so when we know $m_1$ and $m_2$ we could just assume $m_3$ is the next prime and guess values for $z$ and therefore $y$ right?

Example with numbers:
$m_0 = 43,\space m_1=131, \space m_2=137, \space m_3 = 139, \space m_4=149, \space s=42, \space a = 476$
$y = 42 + 476 * 43$
$y = 20510 \bmod 2494633$

$s_1 = (74, 131), \space s_2 = (97, 137), \space s_3 = (77, 139), \space s_4 = (97, 149)$

CRT with two shares:

$x \equiv 74 \bmod 131$
$x \equiv 97 \bmod 137$
$x \equiv 2563 \bmod 17947$

So now we could start guessing

$y_0 = 2563 + 0*17947$
$y_1 = 2563 + 1*17947$
$y_2 = 2563 + 2*17947$
$y_n = 2563 + n*17947$
and, with the knowledge (or assumption) that $m_3$ is the next prime after $137$, a max value of $y_{138} = 2563 + 138 * 17947$
since $2563 + 139 * 17947$ exceeds $m_1*m_2*m_3$

So we have $138$ values to guess the secret from.
$s_n = y_n \bmod 43$


From my conclusion, this would not be a perfect scheme, but everyone states it is. So where am i wrong?

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Okay, so i was finally able to figure out a solution for this. The scheme does indeed yield 138 valid results to guess the secret from. However, since they already know the secret lies in $\mathbb{Z}_{m_0}$ there are only (in the example above) 42 possible secrets anyways. Since $a$ is uniformly distributed, the scheme does indeed leak some probabilistic information about the secret when you apply $\bmod 43$ to all 138 possible values, as seen in:enter image description here

So for example, an attacker could determine that 2,3 or 4 are more likely than for example 0 or 1. However, there is no information leaked about the secret itself.

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  • $\begingroup$ Actually, as you noted, some probabilistic information about the secret is leaked, hence Asmuth-Bloom can't really be described as "perfect" (in the same sense that, say, Shamir is) $\endgroup$
    – poncho
    Commented Jan 22, 2019 at 16:13

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