Replacement for SHA-1
p2pnet.net News:- Following recent attacks on the SHA-1 hash function in FIPS 180-2 , Secure Hash Standard, NIST wants to see one or more additional hash algorithms developed.
This would be achieved through a public competition, “similar to the development process for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES),” says Saqib Ali on full-disk-encryption.net, going on:
“The National Institute of Standards and Technology is planning a competition to develop one or more cryptographic hash algorithms to augment and revise the current Secure Hash Standard (Federal Information Processing Standard 180-2). As a first step in this process, NIST is publishing draft minimum acceptability requirements, submission requirements, and evaluation criteria for candidate algorithms, and requests public comment by April 27, 2007. See Federal Register Announcement for more information.”
NIST has also published its policy on the use of the current hash functions, “Which essentially commands the federal agencies to stop using SHA-1, and instead use SHA-2 family of hash functions (i.e., SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512),” says the post.
The proposed tentative timeline for the competition is here and Ali suggests anyone wanting to talk about this more should join the Encryption Mailing List.
Also See:
full-disk-encryption.net – Competition to select a replacement for SHA-1, January 23, 2007
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