CRYPTO 2012

Aug 19 – 23
Santa Barbara
California
USA

 

 

 

Collusion-Preserving Computation

 

Joel Alwen (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Jonathan Katz (University of Maryland)

Ueli Maurer (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)

Vassilis Zikas (University of Maryland)

 

Abstract:
In collusion-free protocols, subliminal communication is impossible and parties are thus unable to communicate any information “beyond what the protocol allows.” Collusion-free protocols are interesting for several reasons, but have specifically attracted attention because they can be used to reduce trust in game-theoretic mechanisms. Collusion-free protocols are impossible to achieve (in general) when all parties are connected by point-to-point channels, but exist under certain physical assumptions (Lepinksi et al., STOC~2005) or when parties are connected in specific network topologies (Alwen et al., Crypto~2008).


We provide a “clean-slate” definition of the stronger notion of collusion preservation. Our goals in revisiting the definition are:


- To give a definition with respect to arbitrary communication resources (including as special cases the communication models from prior work). We can then, in particular, better understand what types of resources enable collusion-preserving protocols.

 

- To construct protocols that allow no additional subliminal communication in the case when parties can communicate (a bounded amount of information) via other means. (This property is not implied by collusion-freeness.)

 

- To support composition, so protocols can be designed in a modular fashion using sub-protocols run among subsets of the parties.


In addition to proposing the definition, we explore implications of our model and show a general feasibility result for collusion-preserving computation of arbitrary functionalities. We formalize a model for concurrently playing multiple extensive form mediated games and show how to reduce the trust in mechanisms of such games while preserving many important equilibrium notions.

 

 

 

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