A Fair and Privacy-preserved Protocol for Sealed-bid Auctions

Abstract

Although the Internet has been a potential channel for conducting sealed bid auctions, difficulties exist in verifying if the auctioneer over the Internet honestly follows the auction policy. If the auctioneer leaks bid prices to a collusive bidder before the bidder bids, fairness will be infringed. Current literature has proposed auction protocols with the auctioneer being fully trusted. This is a strong assumption for bidders who are not acquainted with the auctioneer. This paper presents a cryptographic protocol with a semi-trusted auctioneer in the sense that the auctioneer cannot compromise the privacy of bids without conspiring with the seller. As our protocol satisfies various requirements of fairness and privacy, it would eliminate the concern of bidders about conspiracies between the auctioneer and malicious bidders.