NIST Opens Competition for a New Hash Algorithm

Invisible Pink Unicorn writes "The National Institute of Standards and Technology has opened a public competition for the development of a new cryptographic hash algorithm, which will be called Secure Hash Algorithm-3 (SHA-3), and will augment the current algorithms specified in the Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 180-2. This is in response to serious attacks reported in recent years against cryptographic hash algorithms, including SHA-1, and because SHA-1 and the SHA-2 family share a similar design. Submissions are being accepted through October 2008, and the competition timeline indicates that a winner will be announced in 2012."

Comments

I know I'm paranoid, but...

[mollog]

I know I'm being paranoid, but did anybody else think that this is a way for the gummint to get a look at the various methods people are using to secure their data? What better way to get the methods than to have a 'competition', something that will stroke the egos of crackers?