Security face-off

摘要

Five teams have been selected for the final of a competition to find a replacement for a key algorithm used in online security. Several years ago, Chinese mathematician Xiaoyun Wang shocked cryptographers by revealing flaws in the current security algorithm, called SHA-i. This raised the possibility that online transactions could one day be rendered insecure. So in 2007, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, based in Gaithersburg, Maryland, launched a contest to find a replacement.