Frank Stajano and Ross Anderson
Traditionally, cryptographic protocols are described as a sequence of
steps, in each of which one principal sends a message to another. It
is implicitly assumed that the fundamental communication primitive is
necessarily one-to-one, and protocols addressing anonymity tend to
resort to the composition of multiple elementary transmissions in
order to frustrate traffic analysis.
This paper builds on a case study, of an anonymous auction between
mistrustful principals with no trusted arbitrator, to introduce "anonymous
broadcast" as a new protocol building block. This primitive is, in many
interesting cases, a more accurate model of what actually happens during
transmission. With certain restrictions it can give a particularly
efficient implementation technique for many anonymity-related protocols.
Frank gave (an evolving version of) the Cocaine Auction talk on the following occasions:
Back to Frank Stajano's or Ross Anderson's home page
validated (recheck)