NIST hash function competition

The NIST hash function competition was an open competition held by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to develop a new hash function called SHA-3 to complement the older SHA-1 and SHA-2. The competition was formally announced in the Federal Register on November 2, 2007.[1] "NIST is initiating an effort to develop one or more additional hash algorithms through a public competition, similar to the development process for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)."[2] The competition ended on October 2, 2012, when NIST announced that Keccak would be the new SHA-3 hash algorithm.[3]

The winning hash function has been published as NIST FIPS 202 the "SHA-3 Standard", to complement FIPS 180-4, the Secure Hash Standard.

The NIST competition has inspired other competitions such as the Password Hashing Competition.

  1. ^ "Federal Register / Vol. 72, No. 212" (PDF). Federal Register. Government Printing Office. November 2, 2007. Retrieved November 6, 2008.
  2. ^ "cryptographic hash project – Background Information". Computer Security Resource Center. National Institute of Standards and Technology. November 2, 2007. Retrieved November 6, 2008.
  3. ^ "NIST Selects Winner of Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA-3) Competition". NIST. October 2, 2012. Retrieved October 2, 2012.