Encryption Algorithm with 'sponge Construction' Picked to Succeed SHA-2

Bringing to a close a five-year selection process, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has selected the successor to the encryption algorithm that is used today to secure much of the information on the Internet.

For SHA-3 (Secure Hash Algorithm), NIST has selected Keccak (pronounced "catch-ack"), an algorithm authored by Guido Bertoni, Joan Daemen and Gilles Van Assche of STMicroelectronics, as well as MichaA<

NIST had received 63 submissions since putting out an open call in 2007 to find a successor to SHA-2. SHA-2 is actually a set of cryptographic hash functions (SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512) in the MD (message digest) algorithm design. At that time, some of the SHA-2 algorithms were thought to be compromised, so NIST set up a competition to find their eventual replacement.