Subject: Cryptographic Hash Workshop - Call for Participation

From: Shu-jen Chang <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2005 14:25:22 -0400

Cryptographic Hash Workshop
NIST Gaithersburg, MD (Green Auditorium)
Oct. 31-Nov. 1, 2005
Submission Deadline: July 15, 2005 (Workshop without Proceedings)

Recently a team of researchers reported that the SHA-1 function offers 
significantly less collision resistance than could be expected from a 
cryptographic hash function of its output size.  NIST plans to host a 
Cryptographic Hash Workshop on Oct. 31-Nov. 1, 2005 to solicit public input 
in how best to respond to the current state of research in this area.  The 
workshop has the following goals:

·       Assess the status of the current NIST-approved hash functions, 
i.e., the SHA-256 and SHA-512 families in        addition to SHA-1;
·       Discuss short term actions to mitigate the potential problems with 
the various applications of the approved     hash functions;
·       Discuss the conditions that would warrant an early transition away 
from any of the approved hash functions;
·       Discuss the potential replacement options for any of the approved 
hash functions;
·       Clarify the properties of unkeyed cryptographic hash functions 
required for different applications such as      digital signatures, key 
derivation, message authentication, and random number generation.

NIST solicits papers, presentations, case studies, panel proposals, and 
participation from any interested parties, including researchers, systems 
architects, vendors, and users.  NIST will post the accepted papers and 
presentations on the workshop web site and include these in a workshop 
handout. However, no formal workshop proceedings will be published. NIST 
encourages presentations and reports on preliminary work that participants 
plan to publish elsewhere. Topics for submissions are included in the 
attached document, and details about the workshop will be available at the 
following web site shortly: http://www.nist.gov/hash-function

Shu-jen Chang
Computer Security Division
NIST