- Jan 24, 2011
- 9,378
The US government's custodian of cryptography standards has released two proposed changes to the SHA-2 hashing algorithm that are designed to boost performance on 64-bit systems.
The tweaks, published this week (PDF) by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, would update the 512-bit version of SHA-2, which was formally approved in 2008. Short for secure hashing algorithm 2, SHA-2's 224-, 256-, and 384-bit versions would remain unchanged. The public has until May 12 to comment on the proposal.
Like other hashing algorithms, SHA-2 is a cryptographic means for verifying that the contents of an email or computer file haven't been tampered with by unauthorized third parties. They work by generating a one-way hash that acts as a digital signature of sorts that is unique to a specific set of data. Higher bit rates improve the security of hashing algorithms by reducing the likelihood of “collisions,” in which two different inputs generate the same outputted hash. But the increased bit rates often come at the cost of higher computing overhead.
In a nutshell, the proposed updates known as SHA-512/224 and SHA-512/256 would yield the same increased security of SHA-2's 512-bit algorithm. But on systems optimized for 64-bit computing, they would reduce some of the performance requirements, essentially by truncating the output.
More details - link
The tweaks, published this week (PDF) by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, would update the 512-bit version of SHA-2, which was formally approved in 2008. Short for secure hashing algorithm 2, SHA-2's 224-, 256-, and 384-bit versions would remain unchanged. The public has until May 12 to comment on the proposal.
Like other hashing algorithms, SHA-2 is a cryptographic means for verifying that the contents of an email or computer file haven't been tampered with by unauthorized third parties. They work by generating a one-way hash that acts as a digital signature of sorts that is unique to a specific set of data. Higher bit rates improve the security of hashing algorithms by reducing the likelihood of “collisions,” in which two different inputs generate the same outputted hash. But the increased bit rates often come at the cost of higher computing overhead.
In a nutshell, the proposed updates known as SHA-512/224 and SHA-512/256 would yield the same increased security of SHA-2's 512-bit algorithm. But on systems optimized for 64-bit computing, they would reduce some of the performance requirements, essentially by truncating the output.
More details - link
