Secret sharing refers to method for distributing a secret amongst a group of participants, each of whom is allocated a share of the secret. The secret can be reconstructed only when a sufficient number of shares are combined together; individual shares are of no use on their own.
More formally, in a secret sharing scheme there is one dealer and n players . The dealer gives a secret to the players, but only when specific conditions are fulfilled. The dealer accomplishes this by giving each player a share in such a way that any group of t (for threshold ) or more players can together reconstruct the secret but no group of fewer than t players can. Such a system is called a (t, n) -threshold scheme (sometimes it is written as an (n, t) -threshold scheme).
Secret sharing was invented by both Adi Shamir and George Blakley , independent of each other, in 1979.
更详细的内容看wiki上的,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_sharing#Secret_Sharing_using_the_Chinese_Remainder_Theorem