Abstract:
Suppose you are competing in an online sealed bid auction for some goods. How
do you know the auction result can be trusted? The auction site could be performing actions that support its own commercial interests by blocking certain bidders or even reporting incorrect winning prices. This problem is magnified
when the auctioneer is an unknown party and the auctions are for high value items. The incentive for the auctioneer to cheat can be high as they could stand to make a significant profit by inflating winning prices or by being paid by a certain bidder to announce them the winner. Verification of auction results provides
confidence in the auction result by making it computationally infeasible for an auction participant to cheat and not get caught. This thesis examines the construction of verifiable privacy preserving combinatorial auction protocols. Two verifiable privacy preserving combinatorial auction protocols are produced by
extending existing auction protocols.
