Skip to main content

Secure Distributed Constraint Satisfaction: Reaching Agreement without Revealing Private Information

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming - CP 2002 (CP 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2470))

Abstract

This paper develops a secure distributed Constraint Satisfaction algorithm. A Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problem (DisCSP) is a CSP in which variables and constraints are distributed among multiple agents. A major motivation for solving a DisCSP without gathering all information in one server is the concern about privacy/security. However, existing DisCSP algorithms leak some information during the search process and privacy/security issues are not dealt with formally. Our newly developed algorithm utilizes a public key encryption scheme. In this algorithm, multiple servers, which receive encrypted information from agents, cooperatively perform a search process that is equivalent to a standard chronological backtracking. This algorithm does not leak any private information, i.e., neither agents nor servers can obtain any additional information on the value assignment of variables that belong to other agents.

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

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Ben-Or, M., Goldwasser, S., and Wigderson, A.: Completeness Theorems for Non-Cryptographic Fault-Tolerant Distributed Computation, Proceedings of 20th ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing (1988) 1–10

    Google Scholar 

  2. ElGamal, T.: A Public Key Cryptosystem and a Signature Scheme Based on Discrete Logarithms, IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. IT-31, No. 4, (1985) 469–472

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  3. Freuder, E. C., Minca, M., and Wallace, R. J.: Privacy/Efficiency Tradeoffs in Distributed Meeting Scheduling by Constraint-based Agents, Proceedings of IJCAI-01 Workshop on Distributed Constraint Reasoning (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Goldreich, O., Micli, S., and Wigderson, A.: How to Play any Mental Game or A Completeness Theorem for Protocols with Honest Majority, Proceedings of 19th ACM Symposium on the Theory of Computing (1987) 218–229

    Google Scholar 

  5. Hamadi, Y., Bessière, C., and Quinqueton, J.: Backtracking in Distributed Constraint Networks, Proceedings of the Thirteenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI-98) (1998) 219–223

    Google Scholar 

  6. Herlea, T., Claessens, J., Neven, G., Piessens, F., Preneel, B., and De Decker, B.: On Securely Scheduling a Meeting, Dupuy, M. and Paradinas, P. eds., Trusted Information-The New Decade Challenge, Proceedings of IFIP SEC (2001) 183–198

    Google Scholar 

  7. Mesequer, P. and Jiménez, M. A.: Distributed Forward Checking, Proceedings of CP-00 Workshop on Distributed Constraint Satisfaction (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Pedersen, T.: A Threshold Cryptosystem without a Trusted Party, Proceedings of EUROCRYPT’ 91 (1991) 522–526, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 547

    Google Scholar 

  9. Shamir, A.: How to share a secret, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 22, No. 11, (1979) 612–613

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  10. Silaghi, M.-C., Sam-Haroud, D., and Faltings, B. V.: Asynchronous Search with Aggregations, Proceedings of the Seventeenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-2000) (2000) 917–922

    Google Scholar 

  11. Suyama, T., Yokoo, M., Sawada, H., and Nagoya, A.: Solving Satisfiability Problems using Reconfigurable Computing, IEEE Transactions on VLSI, Vol. 9, No. 1, (2001) 109–116

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Suzuki, K. and Yokoo, M.: Secure Combinatorial Auctions by Dynamic Programming with Polynomial Secret Sharing, Proceedings of Sixth International Financial Cryptography Conference (FC-02) (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Yokoo, M., Durfee, E. H., Ishida, T., and Kuwabara, K.: Distributed Constraint Satisfaction for Formalizing Distributed Problem Solving, Proceedings of the Twelfth IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (1992) 614–621

    Google Scholar 

  14. Yokoo, M., Durfee, E. H., Ishida, T., and Kuwabara, K.: The Distributed constraint satisfaction problem: formalization and algorithms, IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Vol. 10, No. 5, (1998) 673–685

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Yokoo, M. and Hirayama, K.: Distributed Breakout Algorithm for Solving Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problems, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Multi-Agent Systems, MIT Press (1996) 401–408

    Google Scholar 

  16. Yokoo, M. and Suzuki, K.: Secure Multi-agent Dynamic Programming based on Homomorphic Encryption and its Application to Combinatorial Auctions, Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-agent Systems (AAMAS-2002) (2002): (to appear)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Yokoo, M., Suzuki, K., Hirayama, K. (2002). Secure Distributed Constraint Satisfaction: Reaching Agreement without Revealing Private Information. In: Van Hentenryck, P. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming - CP 2002. CP 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2470. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46135-3_26

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46135-3_26

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-44120-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46135-7

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics