Application of the Fair Secret Exchange Protocols in the Distribution of Electronic Invoices

Exchange of digital goods may not be as easy to perform as it seems. We must consider the fact that one or both participants of the exchange may be dishonest and simply try to misbehave and disappear after gaining some kind of advantage over the other participant. Therefore, it is important to design exchange protocols in such a way that no one can cheat. Either all participants receive the electronic goods they expect or all participants receive nothing at all, provided that any of the participating parties abstained from, or aborted the exchange at any time before the end. Protocols which are designed in such a manner are called fair secret exchange protocols. Fairness of a protocol guarantees that no party can misbehave, and even if they manage to do so, they will be caught and prosecuted. In this paper, we suggest a protocol for fair distribution of invoices based on the aforementioned protocols, and we conduct an experiment that evaluates how the security and fairness of the process of sharing an electronic invoice between the issuer and the customer is increased. The proposed protocol’s fairness and performance evaluation results are also presented.