Communications of the ACM
Cryptographic Showdown, Round 2: NIST Picks 14 Hash Algorithms
The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has completed round one of its open competition to create a new Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA). The cryptographic community narrowed the first round's 64 submissions down to 14 semifinalists. Fifty-one of the 64 algorithms submitted in 2008 met the competition's minimum criteria, and it took the judges a year to examine the entries for flaws and weaknesses.
"We were pleased by the amount and quality of the cryptanalysis we received on the first round candidates, and more than a little amazed by the ingenuity of some of the attacks," says NIST's Bill Burr.
Five finalists are expected to be named from the 14 remaining entries by the end of this year, and a new standard, which will be named SHA-3, should be ready in 2012. SHA-3 will replace the SHA-1 and SHA-2 algorithms currently being used by NIST. This is the third open cryptographic competition conducted by NIST, the first coming in the 1970s, and the second in the 1990s.
From Government Computer News
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2010 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA 
No entries found