Fully private auctions in a constant number of rounds

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

47 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present a new cryptographic auction protocol that prevents extraction of bid information despite any collusion of participants. This requirement is stronger than common assumptions in existing protocols that prohibit the collusion of certain third-parties (e.g. distinct auctioneers). Full privacy is obtained by using homomorphic ElGamal encryption and a private key that is distributed among the set of bidders. Bidders jointly compute the auction outcome on their own without uncovering any additional information in a constant number of rounds (three in the random oracle model). No auctioneers or other trusted third parties are needed to resolve the auction. Yet, robustness is assured due to public verifiability of the entire protocol. The scheme can be applied to any uniform-price (or so-called (M + 1)st-price) auction. An additional, optional, feature of the protocol is that the selling price is only revealed to the seller and the winning bidders themselves. We furthermore provide an in-depth analysis of ties in our protocol and sketch a scheme that requires more rounds but is computationally much more efficient.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
EditorsRebecca N. Wright
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages223-238
Number of pages16
ISBN (Print)9783540406631
DOIs
StatePublished - 2003

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume2742
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

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