Performance analysis of hash message digests SHA-2 and SHA-3 finalists

Abstract

Cryptographic hash functions are considered as workhorses of cryptography. NIST published the first Secure Hash Standard SHA-0 in 1993 as Federal Information Processing Standerd publication (FIPS PUBS) which two years later was replaced by SHA-1 to improve the original design and added SHA-2 family by subsequent revisions of the FIPS. Most of the widely used cryptographic hash functions are under attack today. With the need to maintain a certain level of security, NIST is in the process of selecting new cryptographic hash function through public competition. The winning algorithm will not only have to establish a strong security, but also exhibit good performance and capability to run. Here in this work, analyses are focused on the performance of SHA-3 finalists along with the current standard SHA-2. As specified by the submission proposal by those five finalists, the Java implementations have been done. The results of empirical performance comparison show that two SHA-3 finalists namely Skein and BLAKE perform better which is nearly same as the performance of SHA-2. There is vast gap in the performance of the candidates as the best performer gives 3-4 times better result than the least performer. The results show that, when considering only on the performance aspect, by assuming all the candidates are equally secure, the alternative to SHA-2 can be Skein or BLAKE.