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Contract Signing, Optimism, and Advantage

  • Conference paper
CONCUR 2003 - Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2761))

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Abstract

A contract signing protocol lets two parties exchange digital signatures on a pre-agreed text. Optimistic contract signing protocols enable the signers to do so without invoking a trusted third party. However, an adjudicating third party remains available should one or both signers seek timely resolution. We analyze optimistic contract signing protocols using a game-theoretic approach and prove a fundamental impossibility result: in any fair, optimistic, timely protocol, an optimistic player yields an advantage to the opponent. The proof relies on a careful characterization of optimistic play that postpones communication to the third party. Since advantage cannot be completely eliminated from optimistic protocols, we argue that the strongest property attainable is the absence of provable advantage, i.e., abuse-freeness in the sense of Garay-Jakobsson-MacKenzie.

The authors are partially supported by OSD/ONR CIP/SW URI “Software Quality and Infrastructure Protection for Diffuse Computing” as ONR Grant N00014-01-1-0795. Additional support for Mitchell from NSF Grant CCR-0121403, ITR/SY “Computational Logic Tools for Research and Education,” for Scedrov from NSF Grant CCR-0098096, and for Shmatikov from ONR under Grants N00014-02-1-0109 and N00014-01-1-0837.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Pennsylvania,  

    Rohit Chadha & Andre Scedrov

  2. Stanford University,  

    John C. Mitchell

  3. SRI International,  

    Vitaly Shmatikov

  4. University of Sussex,  

    Rohit Chadha

Authors
  1. Rohit Chadha
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  2. John C. Mitchell
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  3. Andre Scedrov
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  4. Vitaly Shmatikov
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Université Paris 7, PPS, Case 7014, 75205, Paris Cedex 13, France

    Roberto Amadio

  2. LIF, CNRS, Aix-Marseille Université, France

    Denis Lugiez

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Chadha, R., Mitchell, J.C., Scedrov, A., Shmatikov, V. (2003). Contract Signing, Optimism, and Advantage. In: Amadio, R., Lugiez, D. (eds) CONCUR 2003 - Concurrency Theory. CONCUR 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2761. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45187-7_24

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45187-7_24

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-40753-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45187-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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