Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security pp 97–98Cite as

Contract Signing

  • Reference work entry

  • 92 Accesses

A contract is a nonrepudiable agreement on a given contract text, i.e., a contract can be used to prove agreement between the signatories to any verifier. A contract signing scheme [4] is used to fairly compute a contract such that, even if one of the signatories misbehaves, either both or none of the signatories obtain a contract. Contract signing generalizes fair exchange of signatures: a contract signing protocol does not need to output signatures but can define its own format instead. Contract signing can be categorized by the properties of fair exchange (like abuse-freeness) as well as the properties of the nonrepudiation tokens it produces (like third-party time stamping of the contract). Unlike agreement protocols, contract signing needs to provide a nonrepudiable proof that an agreement has been reached.

Early contract signing protocols were either based on an in-line Trusted Third Party [8], gradual exchange of secrets [5], or gradual increase of privilege [3]. Like fair...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

References

  1. Asokan, N., Victor Shoup, and Michael Waidner (1988). “Optimistic fair exchange of digital signatures.” Advances in Cryptology—EUROCRYPT'98, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1403, ed. K. Nyberg. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 591–606.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Baum-Waidner, Birgit and Michael Waidner (2000). “Round-optimal and abuse-free optimistic multi-party contract signing.” 27th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 1853, eds. U. Montanari, J.D.P Rolim, and E. Welzl. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 524 ff.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Ben-Or, M., O. Goldreich, S. Micali, and R.L. Rivest (1990). “A fair protocol for signing contracts.” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 36 (1), 40–46.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Blum, Manuel (1981). “Three applications of the oblivious transfer.” Version 2. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California at Berkeley, Berkley, CA.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Blum, Manuel (1983). “Coin flipping by telephone, a protocol for solving impossible problems.” ACM SIGACT News, 15 (1), 23–27.

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  6. Even, Shimon (1983). “A protocol for signing contracts.” ACM SIGACT News, 15 (1), 34–39.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Pfitzmann, Birgit, Matthias Schunter, and Michael Waidner (1998). “Optimal efficiency of optimistic contract signing.” 17th Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC). ACM Press, New York, 113–122.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Rabin, Michael O. (1983). “Transaction protection by beacons.” Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 27, 256–267.

    MATH  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Matthias Schunter
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Henk C. A. van Tilborg

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2005 International Federation for Information Processing

About this entry

Cite this entry

Schunter, M. (2005). Contract Signing. In: van Tilborg, H.C.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Cryptography and Security. Springer, Boston, MA . https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-23483-7_76

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation