Attacks and Improvement of Quantum Sealed-Bid Auction with EPR Pairs

Recently, an experimentally feasible three-party quantum sealed-bid auction protocol based on EPR pairs [Z.Y. Wang, Commun. Theor. Phys. 54 (2010) 997] was proposed. However, this study points out Wang's protocol cannot resist some internal bidders' attacks, such as the Twice-CNOT attack, the collusion attack. A malicious bidder can launch the Twice-CNOT attack to obtain the other's bid, or the dishonest auctioneer may collude with one bidder and help him/her win the action by changing his/her bid. For preventing against these attacks, a simple solution by using the QKD-based message encryption and a post-confirmation mechanism by adopting the hash function are proposed.