http://h-online.com/-1498071
With a successor to Secure Hash Algorithm 2 (SHA-2) due to be crowned in the summer, questions are being asked as to whether a new cryptographic standard is really necessary. Hash functions, used to calculate short numbers from large data sets to allow the authenticity of the large data set to be verified, form the basis of many security mechanisms. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is responsible for the process, has moved from talking of a successor to talking of 'augmentation'. The search for SHA-3 was initiated because successful attacks on SHA-1 and MD5 were, in principle, also applicable to SHA-2, denting confidence in the security of the successor to the former algorithms. NIST computer scientist Tim Polk has told the 83rd meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) that none of the five finalists are affected by known attacks on MD5, SHA-1 and SHA-2 and the Merkle-Damgård construction on which all three are based. But the competition and the over 400 scientific papers and tests which have been submitted over the course of the competition have shown that SHA-2 is faster than the five finalists – Blake, Grøstl, JH, Keccak and Skein – for many tasks. SHA-3 comes out on top only for short hash-based Message Authentication Codes (MACs). ... _______________________________________________ cryptography mailing list [email protected] http://lists.randombit.net/mailman/listinfo/cryptography
