Robust secret storage in networks
2026-06-29 • Cryptography and Security
Cryptography and Security
AI summaryⓘ
The authors study how to securely store secret information across a network. They introduce a formal way to split and protect this secret so it can survive network problems but still stay safe from attackers. They use a special concept called minimal information-carrying subgraphs to understand exactly when the secret can be recovered. Based on this, they create optimization methods that work using only local network knowledge. Finally, they show that the problem can be translated into a physics model known as a spin Hamiltonian in some special cases.
distributed secret storagenetwork securityminimal information-carrying subgraphsrobustness optimizationadversarial compromisenetwork survivabilitysemi-local methodsspin Hamiltonian
Authors
Vinko Zlatić
Abstract
The problem of storing secure information on a network is studied. A formal framework for distributed secret storage is introduced, and possible applications in technological and social systems are discussed. The problem is formulated as the optimization of a robustness functional in which two competing requirements are balanced: survivability under network-degrading processes and resistance to adversarial compromise. An exact representation of survivability is derived in terms of minimal information-carrying subgraphs (MICS), which provide a reduced description of the reconstruction events relevant to the stored information. This representation is then used to construct semi-local optimization methods whose dynamics do not require global knowledge of the network structure. Finally, it is shown that, in a limiting case, the robustness functional can be mapped naturally to an effective spin Hamiltonian.