A Game-Theoretic Model for Analyzing Fair Exchange Protocols

Fair exchange turns out to be an increasingly important topic due to the rapid growth of electronic commerce in daily life. In this paper, a novel model based on game theory is proposed in order to analyze fair exchange protocols. The formal description of fair exchange protocols is given, and two important properties - non-repudiation and fairness - are defined in this model. As an illustrating example, we analyze a certified email protocol, namely MD scheme.