We introduce a new approach to actively secure two-party computation based on so-called oblivious linear function evaluation (OLE), a natural generalisation of oblivious transfer (OT) and a special case of the notion of oblivious polynomial evaluation introduced by Naor and Pinkas at STOC 1999. OLE works over a finite field F. In an OLE the sender inputs two field elements a ƒ F and b ƒ F, and the receiver inputs a field element x ∈ F and learns only ƒx) = ax + b. Our protocol can evaluate an arithmetic circuit over a finite field F given black-box access to OLE for F. The protocol is unconditionally secure and consumes only a constant number of OLEs per multiplication gate. An OLE over a field F of size O(2κ) be implemented with communication O(κ). This gives a protocol with communication complexity O(C κ) for large enough fields, where C is an arithmetic circuit computing the desired function.