Bulletin board based secure generalized Vickrey auction protocol

A secure generalized Vickrey auction protocol based on bulletin board and homomorphic encryption is proposed. In the protocol, bidders' privacy is guaranteed by the use of indistinguishable homomorphic encryption as well as threshold cryptography. Nobody including the auctioneer can get to know any other bidder's bidding price. So each bidder can bid his true evaluation value without worry. The optimal allocation of goods and the payment of each bidder are determined by the bidders cooperatively using threshold cryptography. In the process of winner determination, all computation performed by the auctioneer can be verified by all bidders. Hence, the newly proposed protocol not only protects the privacy of the bidders, but also prevents the auctioneer from cheating.