Suppose that there are players in two hierarchical groups and a computationally unlimited eavesdropper. Using a random deal of cards, a player in the higher group wishes to send a one-bit message information-theoretically securely either to all the players in her group or to all the players in the two groups. This can be done by the so-called 2-level key set protocol. In this paper we give a necessary and sufficient condition for the 2-level key set protocol to succeed.

We propose the problem of how to transmit an information-theoretically secure bit using random deals of cards among players in hierarchical groups and a computationally unlimited eavesdropper. A player in the highest group wants to send players in lower groups a secret bit which is secure from the eavesdropper and some other players. We formalize this problem and design protocols for constructing secret key exchange spanning trees on hierarchical groups. For each protocol we give sufficient conditions to successfully construct a secret key exchange spanning tree for the hand sizes of the players and the eavesdropper.