Secure multi-party computation made simple

Known secure multi-party computation protocols are quite complex, involving non-trivial mathematical structures and sub-protocols. The purpose of this paper is to present a very simple approach to secure multi-party computation with straight-forward security proofs. This approach naturally yields protocols secure for mixed (active and passive) Corruption and general (as opposed to threshold) adversary structures, confirming the previously proved tight bounds in a simpler framework. Due to their simplicity, the described protocols are well-suited for didactic purposes, which is a main goal of this paper. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.