In this paper, a sealed‐bid multi‐attribute auction protocol that mainly focuses on security issues (i.e., bid privacy, bidder anonymity, and fairness problem) is presented. In recent years, existing literatures mainly focus on the multi‐attribute winner determination problem and other issues, but research of multi‐attribute e‐auction just begin from the perspective of information security. The new proposal is motivated by the conflict between bidder anonymity and denial‐of‐service attack from an insider. It utilizes private set intersection method to solve the privacy problem of winner determination of sealed‐bid multi‐attribute auction. The proposed sealed‐bid auction scheme preserves the strong privacy of the bids and provides verifiable correctness. According to the security analysis, it satisfies the security requirements of an e‐auction. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.