Cryptography Watch

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has announced a design competition for a new hash algorithm (Federal Registrar Notice). The new algorithm is to be called SHA-3 and will augment, rather than supplant, the hash algorithms currently specified in the Secure Hash Standard (FIPS 180-2). Submissions must be received by October 31, 2008.

The security of the SHA series of hashes was brought into question when a Chinese researcher demonstrated that higher order algebraic attacks could be useful in attacks against SHA0 and SHA1.

An updated OpenPGP Message Format specification standard has been published by the IETF in RFC4880.

The selection of the algorithm for the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) has been completed and the AES standard has been published:

Announcing the ADVANCED ENCRYPTION STANDARD (AES)