Practical electronic auction scheme with strong anonymity and bidding privacy

[[abstract]]In 2003, Chang and Chang proposed an efficient and anonymous auction protocol with freewheeling bids. They claimed that their scheme could ensure the bidders' anonymity and secure confidentiality. Later, Jiang et al. pointed out that their scheme could not withstand the man-in-the-middle attacks; during this time, Jiang et al. proposed an improved scheme based on the scheme by Chang and Chang. In 2006, Chang and Chang proposed an anonymous auction scheme that was much more efficient than the above mentioned schemes. However, all of these three schemes were unable to achieve strong anonymity, bidding privacy, and secret bidding prices for sealed-bids. This article proposes a new scheme to resolve the above problems in which two managers and zero knowledge proof are used. The proposed scheme can be widely applied in any sensitive auction (e.g., auctions of cosmetics, medical services, etc.). Moreover, the proposed scheme also satisfies the following requirements: (1) bidding privacy, (2) strong anonymity, (3) secret bidding prices, (4) unforgeability, (5) verifiability, (6) non-repudiation, (7) traceability, (8) one-time registration and (9) easy revocation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.[[note]]SC