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Efficient Electronic Gambling: An Extended Implementation of the Toolbox for Mental Card Games.

Heiko Stamer

Published Jan 1, 2005• 5 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Abstract: There are many wonderful protocols in cryptography which are still waiting for their realization. Here we consider efficient solutions for secure electronic card games. Our contribution seems to be the first known practical implementation that requires no trusted third-party and simultaneously keeps the players ’ strategies confidential. The provided open source library LibTMCG can be used for creating secure peer-to-peer games and furthermore for some unusual applications, e.g., secure multiparty computation or simple electronic voting schemes.

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Leibniz international proceedings in informatics•Jan 1, 2020•40 citations
Abstract: There are many wonderful protocols in cryptography which are still waiting for their realization. Here we consider efficient solutions for secure electronic card games. Our contribution seems to be the first known practical implementation that requires no trusted third-party and simultaneously keeps the players ’ strategies confidential. The provided open source library LibTMCG can be used for creating secure peer-to-peer games and furthermore for some unusual applications, e.g., secure multiparty computation or simple electronic voting schemes.
Mental card games are played without a trusted party and without cards. It is well known that the problem of mental card games can be solved in principle. But the schemes known so far are too messy to be used in practice. Only for the mental poker game a suitable solution is known [Cr'ep 87] that achieves security against player coalition and complete confidentiality of a player's strategy. Here, we present a general-purpose scheme that may be used as basic toolbox for straight-forward implementations of card games. We present a data structure for cards and decks that is secure against player coalitions and enables standard operations like picking up a card, opening it, and (re-)mixing stacks. Futhermore, we introduce tools for special operations like inserting a card into the deck, splitting the deck, parting the game. The correctness of all operations is testified by zeroknowledge proofs. Finally, we discuss security problems that are typical for mental card games and suggest solutio...
Online gambling allows users to participate in mental games and bet over the Internet. It can open new opportunities for casinos to make more money; however, at the same time, there are a lot of security challenges. In this paper, we describe our scheme for secure online gambling and secure mental poker protocols over the Internet based on our previous researches. Our scheme provides both the fairness of online gambling processes and secure linking of the online gambling with payment. A unique link between payments and gambling outcome is provided so that the winner can be ensured to get the payment. The gambling games are generic in our fair online gambling scheme. Mental poker is one of most popular games of online gambling. In this paper, efficient and secure mental poker protocols are provided. These mental poker protocols are based on multiple encryption and decryption of individual cards. These protocols satisfy all major security requirements of a real mental poker. The card salesman has been got rid of and the minimal effect due to collusion has been guaranteed. These protocols are more efficient compared with other known protocols. The strategies of players can be kept confidential with the introduction of a dealer. These mental poker protocols are suitable for implementation in an online card game.
An efficient and secure mental poker scheme is proposed in this paper. It is based on multiple encryption and decryption of individual cards. The protocol satisfies all major security requirements of a real mental poker. It gets rid of the Card Salesman and guarantees minimal effect due to collusion of players. The protocol is secure and more efficient compared with other known protocols. The strategies of players can be kept confidential with the introduction of a Dealer. The protocol is suitable to be implemented in an on-line card game.
Abstract Card-based cryptography is a variety of secure multiparty computation (MPC). Recently, a new technique called private operations was introduced because the protocol can be implemented with fewer cards than that by using the conventional technique called the shuffle. For example, Nakai et al. showed that if the private operations are available, secure computations of AND and OR operations for two inputs can be realized simultaneously by using four cards, and the protocol is applied to a four-card majority voting protocol with three inputs. This paper shows that only three cards are sufficient to construct a majority voting protocol with three inputs. Specifically, we propose two constructions of three-input majority voting protocols. One is a protocol assuming that players can announce their output, and the other is not allowed. Compared to Nakai et al.’s protocol, the protocol with the announcement is realized without any additional private operations and communications. On the other hand, the second construction requires two more private operations and communications because it removes the assumption on the announcement from the first construction. More importantly, the idea of the second protocol can be extended to an n-input majority voting protocol with n cards, which is the main result of this paper.
Card-based cryptography, as first proposed by den Boer [den Boer, 1989], enables secure multiparty computation using only a deck of playing cards. Many protocols as of yet come with an “honest-but-curious” disclaimer. However, modern cryptography aims to provide security also in the presence of active attackers that deviate from the protocol description. In the few places where authors argue for the active security of their protocols, this is done ad-hoc and restricted to the concrete operations needed, often using additional physical tools, such as envelopes or sliding cover boxes. This paper provides the first systematic approach to active security in card-based protocols. The main technical contribution concerns shuffling operations. A shuffle randomly permutes the cards according to a well-defined distribution but hides the chosen permutation from the players. We show how the large and natural class of uniform closed shuffles, which are shuffles that select a permutation uniformly at random from a permutation group, can be implemented using only a linear number of helping cards. This ensures that any protocol in the model of Mizuki and Shizuya [Mizuki and Shizuya, 2014] can be realized in an actively secure fashion, as long as it is secure in this abstract model and restricted to uniform closed shuffles. Uniform closed shuffles are already sufficient for securely computing any circuit [Mizuki and Sone, 2009]. In the process, we develop a more concrete model for card-based cryptographic protocols with two players, which we believe to be of independent interest.