Efficient Protocols for the General Millionaires' Problem

Abstract

Secure multiparty computation (SMC) is a research focusing in the international cryptographic community. The protocols used to address the millionaires' problem are the basic building blocks of most SMC protocols and their efficiency dominates that of many other SMC protocols. To the best of our knowledge, almost all protocols used to address the millionaires' problem are based on integers, which means that their applications are limited. In this study, we propose precise and efficient protocols for rational numbers based on additively homomorphic encryptions. One of our protocols is inspired by computational geometry and it reduces the millionaires' problem to computing the area of a triangle formed by three private points. This approach can determine whether the relationship between two private inputs is greater than, equal to or less than, and it has a much lower computational complexity compared with existing methods. We proved that these protocols are secure using simulation paradigm. Our approaches can be used in many SMC protocols that involve rational numbers and integers, and they can also be used directly to solve some secure multiparty computational geometry problem in rational number field.