Performance analysis of hash message digests SHA-2 and SHA-3 finalists
Date
2012
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Department of Computer Science& Information Technology
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.
Description
Keywords
Performance analysis, Hash algorithms