Date of Award

8-2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Legacy Department

Computer Engineering

Committee Chair/Advisor

Sander, Samuel

Committee Member

Brooks , Richard

Committee Member

Walker , Ian

Abstract

Distributed electronic auctions are increasingly preferred over centralized electronic auctions today. The success of peer-to-peer file sharing networks has made distributed electronic auctions a possibility. Due to trust and conflict of interest issues with centralized auctioneer systems, multiple auctioneers in distributed roles are preferred. However, there is a possibility of auctioneer node collusion [16] and auctioneer-bidder collusion and auctioneer-seller collusion in such mechanisms.
To overcome these problems, a new peer-to-peer auction protocol [17] with auctioneers forming auctioneer groups has been proposed. This protocol keeps the auctioneers honest by ensuring that no single auctioneer in the group has absolute control over the auction process. But, it leads to multiple bid comparisons and thus increases redundancy. It also fails to enforce a secure bid comparison method and hence fails to provide privacy of bids. This thesis presents a modified version of this protocol where the oblivious transfer method [14] is used to solve the Yao millionaires' problem [22] that arises between two auctioneer groups when they have to compare bids. Additionally, a 2nd price mechanism in which only the second highest bid is known to all the auctioneer groups except for the auctioneer group which holds the highest bid, ensures that no unnecessary bid comparisons are made between auctioneer groups. Hence, the result is an efficient auction protocol which is iterative, asynchronous, 2nd price and based on a peer to peer mechanism.

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