Paper 2014/189

Practical Receipt-Free Sealed-Bid Auction in the Coercive Environment

Jaydeep Howlader, Sanjit Kumar Roy, Ashis Kumar Mal

Abstract

Sealed-Bid auction is an efficient and rational method to establish the price in open market. However sealed-bid auctions are sub- ject to bid-rigging attack. Receipt-free mechanisms were proposed to prevent bid-rigging. The prior receipt-free mechanisms are based on two assumptions; firstly, existence of untappable channel between bidders and auction authorities. Secondly, mechanisms assume the authorities to be honest (not colluding). Moreover the bandwidth required to com- municate the receipt-free bids is huge. This paper presents a sealed-bid auction mechanism to resist bid-rigging. The proposed method does not assume untappable channel nor consider the authorities to be necessarily honest. The proposed mechanism also manages the bandwidth efficiently, and improves the performance of the system.