Following the advances in the cryptanalysis of hash functions in the last years, and especially the alarming results on SHA1 and Merkle-Damgard hash functions, NIST has started a cryptographic competition to offer secure and fast hash function standard, to be named SHA3. The competition, currently at its second phase (with 14 remaining candidates), is the focus of many efforts in cryptanalysis and implementation.
In this talk, we shall cover some of the aspects of this competition, starting from the reasons that led to it, through the first phase, the 14 candidates that were chosen for the second round, their status (both security-wise and performance-wise), and of course, what is left to be done, so the outcome of the process will be the best possible SHA3.