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An optimistic fair exchange protocol with active intermediaries

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Abstract

The study of business transactions is a topic of interest in the field of electronic commerce. Fair Exchange protocols deal with the problem of how the different parties involved in a transaction can exchange their parts securely, i.e., with assurance that the other parties will carry on with the transaction. Fair Exchange is a field of research that has been extensively studied, but we have found that previous proposals have failed to address one problem that concerns electronic commerce, i.e., transactions with active intermediaries. Previous Fair Exchange protocols deal with scenarios where only 2 parties are involved or scenarios where N known parties have to reach a common agreement, omitting scenarios where active intermediaries are involved. In this paper, we present an Optimistic Fair Exchange protocol for transactions with active intermediaries, which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first of its kind.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a grant, linked to the investigation project TSI2007-62986 from the Ministry of Science and Innovation (MICINN), Spain, and partially financed by the European Social Fund and the Consolider investigation project with reference CSD2007-00004 from the MICINN, and in collaboration with the Institute for Infocomm Research in Singapore.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of the Balearic Islands, Palma, Spain

    G. Draper-Gil, J. L. Ferrer-Gomila & M. F. Hinarejos

  2. Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore, Singapore

    J. Zhou

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  1. G. Draper-Gil
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  2. J. Zhou
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  3. J. L. Ferrer-Gomila
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  4. M. F. Hinarejos
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Correspondence to G. Draper-Gil.

Additional information

We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions, which we believe greatly improved this manuscript.

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Draper-Gil, G., Zhou, J., Ferrer-Gomila, J.L. et al. An optimistic fair exchange protocol with active intermediaries. Int. J. Inf. Secur. 12, 299–318 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10207-013-0194-9

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