plus/minus epsilon

Certificate Transparency (CT) is a relatively new addition to the TLS ecosystem. Its fundamental goal is to provide the tools for website operators to detect the mis-issuance of certificates for their own websites. Historically, this is something that only large tech companies have been able to do successfully.

In Adi Shamir's paper titled How to Share a Secret, he quotes this problem from a combinatorics textbook:

Eleven scientists are working on a secret project. They wish to lock up the documents in a cabinet so that the cabinet can be opened if and only if six or more of the scientists are present. What is the smallest number of locks needed? What is the smallest number of keys to the locks each scientist must carry?

I've decided to start writing a regular series of short blog posts about crypto. The focus will be more on the social and problem-solving aspects of crypto rather than the math.