Privacy-enhancing auctions using rational cryptography

Peter Bro Miltersen, Jesper Buus Nielsen, Nikos Triandopoulos

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

We consider enhancing with privacy concerns a large class of auctions, which include sealed-bid single-item auctions but also general multi-item multi-winner auctions, our assumption being that bidders primarily care about monetary payoff and secondarily worry about exposing information about their type to other players and learning information about other players' types, that is, bidders are greedy then paranoid. To treat privacy explicitly within the game theoretic context, we put forward a novel hybrid utility model that considers both monetary and privacy components in players' payoffs. We show how to use rational cryptography to approximately implement any given ex interim individually strictly rational equilibrium of such an auction without a trusted mediator through a cryptographic protocol that uses only point-to-point authenticated channels between the players. By "ex interim individually strictly rational" we mean that, given its type and before making its move, each player has a strictly positive expected utility. By "approximately implement" we mean that, under cryptographic assumptions, running the protocol is a computational Nash equilibrium with a payoff profile negligibly close to the original equilibrium.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAdvances in Cryptology - CRYPTO 2009 - 29th Annual International Cryptology Conference, Proceedings
Pages541-558
Number of pages18
DOIs
StatePublished - 2009
Event29th Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2009 - Santa Barbara, CA, United States
Duration: 16 Aug 200920 Aug 2009

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume5677 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference29th Annual International Cryptology Conference, CRYPTO 2009
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CitySanta Barbara, CA
Period16/08/0920/08/09

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Privacy-enhancing auctions using rational cryptography'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this