Efficient k-out-of-n oblivious transfer schemes

Abstract

Oblivious transfer is an important cryptographic protocol in various security applications. For example, in on-line transactions, a k-out-of-n oblivious transfer scheme allows a buyer to privately choose k-out of n digital goods from a merchant without learning information about other n-k goods. In this paper, we propose several efficient two-round k-out-of-n oblivious transfer schemes, in which the receiver R sends O(k) messages to the sender S, and S sends O( n) messages back to R. The schemes provide unconditional security for either sender or receiver. The computational security for the other side is based on the Decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) or Chosen-Target Computational Diffie-Hellman (CT-CDH) problems. Our schemes have the nice property of universal parameters, that is, each pair of R and S need not hold any secret before performing the protocol. The system parameters can be used by all senders and receivers without any trapdoor specification. In some cases, our OT(n)(k) schemes are the most efficient ones in terms of the communication cost, either in rounds or the number of messages. Moreover, one of our schemes is extended to an adaptive oblivious transfer scheme. In that scheme, S sends O( n) messages to R in one round in the commitment phase. For each query of R, only O( 1) messages are exchanged and O( 1) operations are performed. The preliminary version of this paper was published at PKC ' 05 [ Chu and Tzeng 2005].