Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

SHA-256/384/512 Released

Posted by chrisd on from the no-not-that-kind-of-hash dept.

The Right Brute writes "It appears that the successors to the SHA-1 cryptographic digest algorithm have been released. FIPS 180-2 can be found here which I believe is the final version of the SHA-256/384/512 algorithm (it does not appear to have changed since the last draft). I have an implementation that I did as a CWEB literate programming example that might serve as a good companion to the specification."

2 of 22 comments (clear)

  1. May not be patent-free by FattMattP · · Score: 3, Interesting
    From page two of http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/fips/fips180-2/f ips180-2.pdf:
    10. Patents: Implementations of the secure hash algorithms in this standard may be covered by U.S. or foreign patents.
    Oh well. Too bad for us.
    --
    Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
    1. Re:May not be patent-free by foobar104 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Um. Are you reading the same sentence I'm reading?

      "Implementations of the secure hash algorithms in this standard may be covered by U.S. or foreign patents." (emphasis mine)

      All evidence indicates that the SHA algorithms themselves are not patented. Specific implementations of them may be; there's no restriction on that.

      And as far as that goes, I have no problem at all licensing algorithms for things like this. In many cases-- not all, but many-- your choices are (1) license-free or (2) secure, and the two are mutually exclusive.