Some time ago now the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) announced the cryptographic hash algorithm competition to develop the new hash algorithm destined to replace the SHA-2 algorithm. 

 

The new hash algorithm will be called ‘SHA-3’ and will augment the hash algorithms currently specified in FIPS 180-2, Secure Hash Standard. The closing date for submissions is October 31st, 2008.

The initial call for submissions was made in November 2007 with the deadline set as October 2008. In a process similar to that used for the selection of AES, there will be a process of review that culminates in the first round picks made at First Hash Function Candidate Conference some time in 2Q 2009, then a period of public consultation and review ending in 2Q 2010 after which another round of review resulting in some more candidates being weeded out at the Second Hash Function Candidate Conference.

After the second conference the final candidates will be given a chance to be tweaked to address any comments before the final public review process continues into 4Q 2011. Then in 1Q 2012 the Final Hash Function Candidate Conference after which the winner will be announced in the Second Quarter of 2012.

So far there are a couple of candidates announced, one Skein is developed by a team including Bruce Schneier, it is designed to be fast and provide a high level of security and is a conservative design based on the Threefish block cipher. You can find out more about the algorithm here at the Skein web site. 

Ronald Rivest announced the MD6 algorithm at CRYPTO’08 conference in September. The algorithm is designed by a team from MIT lead by Ronald Rivest, it is designed to have various output sizes and be resistant to current attacks against hash functions. You can find out more about this submission here.

It is expected that over the next few days more and more submission details will be made public. The NIST site for the submission and selection process can be found here.