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SHA-3 Secure Hash Algorithm: New Face Of Crypto
Secure hash algorithm beats 63 contenders to become NIST's next-generation cryptographic standard
Cryptography aficionados, say hello to a new hash algorithm backed by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST).
Dubbed Keccak (pronounced "catch-ack"), the secure hash algorithm, which will officially be known as SHA-3, beat 63 other submissions after NIST issued an open call for a SHA-2 replacement in 2007. That move was driven by worries--which so far haven't come to pass--that SHA-2 might be vulnerable to being cracked.
Hashing algorithms are a vital information security tool, and used to authenticate messages, as well as digital signatures and documents. "A good hash algorithm has a few vital characteristics," according to NIST. "Any change in the original message, however small, must cause a change in the digest, and for any given file and digest, it must be infeasible for a forger to create a different file with the same digest."
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