Blog: NIST Is Nearly Ready to Pick the Next Hash Algorithm

NIST Is Nearly Ready to Pick the Next Hash Algorithm
Government Computer News (08/18/10) Jackson, William

Developers of the 14 semifinalist algorithms for the new SHA-3 Secure Hash Algorithm standard will defend their work at the second U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) candidate conference. The final selection for a new standard hashing algorithm for the federal government is expected by early 2012, says NIST's Bill Burr. "All in all we've got quite a bit of performance data," Burr says. "At this point, we have a surprising amount of data on hardware implementation on all 14 candidates." SHA-3 will augment the algorithms specified in Federal Information Processing Standard 180-2, which includes SHA-1 as well as SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512, collectively known as SHA-2. The conference will give the entrants an opportunity to address the results of the analysis and testing over the past year. The field of 14 will eventually be narrowed down to a final five algorithms, which will be analyzed and tested again before the final choice is made in the winter of 2012.

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