Online English auction systems are inherently subject to attacks because the bidders and auctioneer are not copresent and bidders communicate with the auctioneer via private channels. If the auction is not conducted using a fair protocol, the auctioneer is able to commit fraud by colluding with specific bidders so as to benefit them. Existing online English auction systems require sellers and buyers to trust the auctioneer. In this paper we propose a fair nonrepudiation protocol for online English auctions. The auctioneer does not need to be trusted, and moreover a trusted online notary mechanism is not necessary. The bids from buyers are chained into a hash chain. The auctioneer is not able to commit fraud and the bidding result from the auction should be fair. The proposed protocol also allows bid requests to be processed concurrently. The implementation and experimental results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system.

Published in: World Congress on Internet Security (WorldCIS-2017)

• Date of Conference: 11-14 December 2017
• DOI: 10.2053/WorldCIS.2017.0009
• ISBN: 978-1-908320-81-0
• Conference Location: University of Cambridge, UK