NIST Announces Round 1 Candidates For SHA-3 Competition

jd writes "NIST has announced the round 1 candidates for the Cryptographic Hash Algorithm Challenge. Of the 64 who submitted entries, 51 were accepted. Of those, in mere days, one has been definitely broken, and three others are believed to have been. At this rate, it won't take the couple of years NIST was reckoning to whittle down the field to just one or two. (In comparison, the European Union version, NESSIE, received just one cryptographic hash function for its contest. One has to wonder if NIST and the crypto experts are so concerned about being overwhelmed with work for this current contest, why they all but ignored the European effort. A self-inflicted wound might hurt, but it's still self-inflicted.) Popular wisdom has it that no product will have any support for any of these algorithms for years — if ever. Of course, popular wisdom is ignoring all Open Source projects that support cryptography (including the Linux kernel) which could add support for any of these tomorrow. Does it really matter if the algorithm is found to be flawed later on, if most of these packages support algorithms known to be flawed today? Wouldn't it just be geekier to have passwords in Blue Midnight Wish or SANDstorm rather than boring old MD5, even if it makes no practical difference whatsoever?"

Comments

Re:I'd ignore the Europeans too

[PolygamousRanchKid]

What is the point if they only got one submission for the Hash contest?

Europe's top contenders in the hash competition were devastated by some new laws in Amsterdam, banning whores and space-cake cafes: http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=683353

Well, duh, do you think people travel there to look at the wooden shoes and windmills? What have their politicians been smoking?

And yes it will take years to pick the winner.

If the stuff is good, and the judges supply of Doritos hold out, it could take decades.

Re:Why can't we mod down submitters?

[houghi]

Let me guess, the submitter likes to enable all the useless bling effects on Compiz but never gets any work done, and has racing stripes on his Civic....

Reminds me of the manager who works a whole week on his presentation. 90% of the time is used for special effects. And then when he gives the presentation realizes he needs to move on, but can't because his nice slides force him to show every special effect he has put into it.
Other people realise that Powerpoint is just a tool. Giving the presentation is what you need to do yourself.