This is related to Is it possible to create a mix of predefined and generated shares for Shamir's Secret Sharing?, but I have unfortunately lost access to that question and can't merge accounts right now.
I now know that it is most definitely possible to create some predefined shares but was looking for further information on the security of doings this based of a few points.
Always choose $j$ "arbitrary" shares such that there are always less than $k$ (e.g. $j=1$ in a 3 out of 5 scheme), applies to all below.
If I randomly generate a short sequence of words (e.g. bip39) and then hash that to a length greater the secret rather than letting a user choose their own "arbitrary" shares.
A proposed process for something like this would be:
- Define Points ($x$,$y$)
- ($0$, secret)
- (random $x$, hashed "arbitrary share")
- (random $x$, random $y$) - $k - 2$ times
- Lagrange Interpolation returning polynomial $p$
- Generate further shares from $p$
- "arbitrary share" hashed to length of secret.
- All Random generators are CSPRNGs.
- Define Points ($x$,$y$)