Abstract:
In the modern era of information and communication technology, cryptographic hash functions play an important role in ensuring the authenticity, integrity and non-repudiation goals of information security as well as efficient information processing. This article provides an overview on the role of hash functions in information security, popular hash function designs, some important analytical results and recent advances in this field.
Keywords: Hash function, Cryptanalysis, Collision and (second) preimage attacks, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-3 hash function competition.