Privacy-Enhancing Auctions Using Rational Cryptography

TY - GEN

T1 - Privacy-Enhancing Auctions Using Rational Cryptography

AU - Miltersen, Peter Bro

AU - Nielsen, Jesper Buus

AU - Triandopoulos, Nikolaos

N1 - Conference code: 29

PY - 2009

Y1 - 2009

N2 - 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.Supported by the Center for Algorithmic Game Theory, funded by The Carlsberg Foundation.

AB - 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.Supported by the Center for Algorithmic Game Theory, funded by The Carlsberg Foundation.

U2 - 10.1007/978-3-642-03356-8_32

DO - 10.1007/978-3-642-03356-8_32

M3 - Conference article

SN - 0302-9743

VL - 5677

SP - 541

EP - 558

JO - Lecture Notes in Computer Science

JF - Lecture Notes in Computer Science

T2 - International Cryptology Conference- CRYPTO 2009

Y2 - 16 August 2009 through 20 August 2009

ER -