Matt Franklin (AT&T) on "a Secure Auction Service" 1:00pm 2/13

[David Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

                       COLLOQUIUM -- COLLOQUIUM
                     Computer Science Department
               University of Maryland Baltimore County


      The Design and Implementation of a Secure Auction Service


                           Matthew Franklin
                        AT&T Bell Laboratories
                         franklin@big.att.com


We present the design and implementation of a distributed service for
performing sealed-bid auctions.  This service provides an interface by
which clients (bidders) can issue secret bids to the service for an
advertised auction.  Once the bidding period has ended, the auction
service opens the bids, determines the winning bid, and provides the
winning bidder with a ticket for claiming the item bid upon.  Using
novel cryptographic techniques, the service is constructed to provide
strong protection for both the auction house and correct bidders,
despite the malicious behavior of any number of bidders and even a
constant fraction of the servers comprising the auction service.
Specifically, it is guaranteed that (i) bids of correct bidders are
not revealed until after the bidding period has ended, (ii) the
auction house collects payment for the winning bid, (iii) losing
bidders forfeit no money, and (iv) only the winning bidder can collect
the item bid upon.  We also discuss techniques to enable anonymous
bidding.


             Joint work with Mike Reiter (AT&T Bell Labs)


                 1:00pm Monday, February 13th, 1995
                     Computer Science Department
                210 Engineering and Computer Science
               University of Maryland Baltimore County
                          Baltimore MD 21228


               Host: Alan Sherman (sherman@cs.umbc.edu)


                  There will be light refreshments.