Skein Chosen as SHA-3 Finalist

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has selected the Skein cryptographic hash function as one of five finalists in its SHA-3 competition. The winner will become the new U.S. hash function standard. Sixty-four proposed hash function designs were submitted to NIST when the competition began two years ago. Skein was designed by a team of cryptographers and computer security experts, including UW’s Yoshi Kohno. (If you look closely, you’ll notice that the team photo was taken in the beautiful halls of the UW Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering.)