Trust and Privacy in Grid Resource Auctions

A Grid resource broker is the arbiter for access to a Grid’s computational resources and therefore its performance and functionality has a wide-ranging influence on the utilization and performance of the Grid. Ideally, we want to avoid relying on a single ‘trusted’ resource broker because it may not be trustworthy. For example, a broker holding a resource auction could examine and reveal bid information to others, or defraud participants by subverting the auction results. The use of privacy preserving and verifiable auction protocols offers guarantees beyond those possible in real world auctions, making the electronic auctions as secure, or more secure, than their physical counterparts. In this chapter, we provide the background to understand privacy preserving and verifiable auction schemes and discuss the implications of adopting them on Grid architecture. We then evaluate a range of potential secure auction schemes and identify those that are most suitable to be adopted within for use in the Grid.