glite-ssss-split-passwd

glite-ssss-split-passwd — Splits a password into shares to be distributed among untrusted parties.

Synopsis

glite-ssss-split-passwd [ -h ] [ -q ] [ -V ] SHARES NEEDED PASSWORD

DESCRIPTION

glite-ssss-split-passwd is a command-line tool to split an ascii password into a number of shares using Shamir's Secret Sharing Scheme (see "How to Share a Secret", by Adi Shamir, Communications of the ACM, November, 1979, Volume 22, Number 11, page 612.).

The ascii password is split into SHARES number of random hex parts of which NEEDED number of parts are needed to re-construct the password. The re-construction of the password is theoretically not possible of parts fewer than NEEDED, thus it enables the safe storage of password parts on not fully trusted password storages.

The scheme also provides some reliability, since not all parts of the split password are needed to re-construct the original password.

OPTIONS

-h

Print a short help message on parameters and usage, and exit.

-q

Quiet operation.

-V

Print the version number and exit.

SHARES

The number of parts to split the password into.

NEEDED

The number of split password parts needed to re-construct the password. Shall be less than SHARES.

PASSWORD

The password to split as an ascii string.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

GLITE_SSSS_LOG_LEVEL

Specifies the level of the log messages printed: DEBUG, INFO, WARN or ERROR (default, if not defined).

GLITE_SSSS_LOG_FILE

Specifies the file, where messages are printed. Defaults to stdout, if not defined.

SEE ALSO

glite-ssss-join-passwd(1)

EXAMPLES

glite-ssss-split-passwd 5 2 "#%&lkXYt"
glite-ssss-split-passwd 7 3 "?&\>+asdffgew"