A Fair and Secure Reverse Auction for Government Procurement

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A Fair and Secure Reverse Auction for Government Procurement sustainability Article A Fair and Secure Reverse Auction for Government Procurement Chia-Chen Lin 1,*, Ya-Fen Chang 2, Chin-Chen Chang 3 and Yao-Zhu Zheng 4 1 Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Chin-Yi University of Technology, Taichung 41170, Taiwan 2 Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, Taichung 40401, Taiwan; [email protected] 3 Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, Feng Chia University, Taichung 40724, Taiwan; [email protected] 4 Department of Computer Science, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu 30013, Taiwan; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected] Received: 21 August 2020; Accepted: 12 October 2020; Published: 16 October 2020 Abstract: With the development of e-commerce, the electronic auction is attracting the attention of many people. Many Internet companies, such as eBay and Yahoo!, have launched online auction systems. Many researchers have studied the security problems of electronic auction systems, but few of them are multi-attribute-based. In 2014, Shi proposed a provable secure, sealed-bid, and multi-attribute auction protocol based on the semi-honest model. We evaluated this protocol and found that it has some design weaknesses and is vulnerable to the illegal operations of buyers, which results in unfairness. In this paper, we improved this protocol by replacing the Paillier’s cryptosystem with the elliptic curve discrete (ECC), and we designed a novel, online, and multi-attribute reverse-auction system using the semi-honest model. In our system, sellers’ identities are not revealed to the buyers, and the buyers cannot conduct illegal operations that may compromise the fairness of the auction. Keywords: auction; government procurement; e-commerce; information security 1. Introduction In recent years, electronic commerce, also known as e-commerce, has developed quickly. More and more consumers prefer to shop on the Internet for convenience and other benefits. As a kind of e-commerce, e-auctions also have attracted much attention. Many Internet companies, such as eBay and Yahoo!, have launched online auction platforms. Many governments have also participated in online procurement auctions. However, most of them may partially digitalize the procedure of proposal collection. As for the determination of the final winner, either it is mainly proceeded by operators rather than the digitized and automated operation or the bids have not been properly protected so that bribing problems would occur in online government procurements. Based on whether they have opening bid prices, auctions can be classified into two types including sealed-bid auctions and open auctions [1]. Furthermore, open auctions can be classified into English auctions and Dutch auctions. In an English auction, the auctioneer publishes a basic price, and bidders openly submit their bids. The bid price should be higher than the basic price, and the auction will be terminated if no bidders submit a higher price. The bidder who submits the highest price wins the auction. In a Dutch auction, the auctioneer publishes a basic price at the beginning of the auction. If no one wishes to pay this price, the auctioneer decreases the price until some bidder accepts it, and this bidder becomes the winner. Sustainability 2020, 12, 8567; doi:10.3390/su12208567 www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability Sustainability 2020, 12, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 12 Based on the numbers of buyers and sellers, auctions can be classified into one-side auctions and doubleSustainability auctions2020 [2]., 12 ,In 8567 one-side auctions, there are several buyers in the auction for one seller or vice2 of 12 versa. The former situation is called a forward auction that is used commonly in antique auctions. In a reverse auction, there are multiple sellers for a single buyer, as shown in Figure 1b, which gives buyers aBased chance on to the find numbers the lowest-price of buyers seller. and sellers,This type auctions of auction can includes be classified governments into one-side that invite, auctions forand example, double tenders auctions for [2 ].the In one-sideconstruction auctions, of infrastructure. there are several As buyersfor the indouble the auction auction, for oneit is seller a combinationor vice versa. of forward The former and reverse situation auctions. is called In a ot forwardher words, auction in double that is auctions, used commonly there are in many antique buyersauctions. and sellers In a reverse in the process. auction, A there good are exam multipleple of a sellers double for auction a single is the buyer, stock as market. shown in Figure1b, whichBased gives on how buyers they a determine chance to find the winner, the lowest-price auctions seller.can be This classified type of into auction single-attribute includes governments auctions andthat multi-attribute invite, for example, auctions tenders [3,4]. 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