Joel Alwen
New York University

TITLE:
Rational Secure Function Evaluation and Ideal Mechanism Design

ABSTRACT:
Secure Computation essentially guarantees that
whatever computation n players can do with the help of
a trusted party, they can also do by themselves. Fundamentally,
however, this notion depends on the honesty
of at least some players.
We put forward and implement a stronger notion,
Rational Secure Computation, that does not depend on
player honesty, but solely on player rationality. The
key to our implementation is showing that the ballot-
box--the venerable device used throughout the world
to tally secret votes securely--can actually be used to
securely compute any function.
Our work bridges the fields of Game Theory and
Cryptography, and has broad implications for Mechanism
Design.

Sergey Izmalkov (MIT), Silvio Micali (MIT) and Matt Lepinski (MIT).