Author(s): K. Latif, A. Aziz and A. Mahboob
Article publication date: 2012-03-01
Vol. 30 No. 1 (yearly), pp. 14-22.
234

Keywords

Authentication, SHA-3, Blake, Keccak, Skein, Cryptographic Hash Functions, High Speed Encryption Hardware, FPGA.

Abstract

Cryptographic hash functions are widely used in many information security applications like digital signatures, Message Authentication Codes (MACs), and other forms of authentication. In response to recent advances in cryptanalysis of commonly used hash algorithms, NIST USA announced a publicly open competition for selection of new standard Secure Hash Algorithm called SHA-3. One important aspect of this competition is evaluation of hardware implementations of candidates. In this work we present efficient hardware implementations and corresponding performance evaluations of three final round candidates of SHA-3: Blake, Keccak and Skein. We implemented and investigated the performance of these candidates on modern and latest FPGA devices from Xilinx. We show our results for most recently released devices on which implementations have not been reported yet. This work serves as performance investigation of leading SHA-3 finalists on most up-to-date FPGAs.