by Ilya Mirman, Cilk Arts
Powerful computers have made cracking encryption schemes increasingly easier, but a recent effort is putting the ever more potent multicore CPUs to work on the encryption side of the equation.
A cryptographic hash function maps an input string to an output string of some fixed bit-length. Cryptographic hash functions have many applications, such as digital signatures, time-stamping methods, and file modification detection methods. In response to advances in the cryptanalysis of hash functions, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has recently created a competition for a new cryptographic hash algorithm.
A team from MIT led by Professor Ron L. Rivest (founder of RSA Data Security and author of the popular MD5 hash function) has put forth an entry. MD6 is a totally new design that leverages the larger memory and multicore CPUs found in today’s computers. The full submission is available here, along with the invited talk given at the CRYPTO 2008 conference.
