Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the main body behind standards for the Internet has on November 3 published RFC 7693 “The BLAKE2 Cryptographic Hash and Message Authentication Code (MAC)”, edited by CSIT Research Fellow Dr. Markku-Juhani O. Saarinen. RFC Text: https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7693
Publication of this SHA3 finalist as an RFC together with related ISO Object Identifiers enables its use in security protocols such as TLS and IPSec, in PKI certificates, and other security applications. The algorithm comes in two variants, both of which have received extensive cryptanalysis. BLAKE2b outperforms the MD5, MD6, SHA1, SHA2, and the SHA3 algorithm Keccak (by a factor of three), making it the fastest message integrity algorithm currently available. Thanks to its built-in MAC functionality we expect to see it used in high-performance applications such as VPN backbone links. The BLAKE2s variant is optimized for 8- to 32-bit platforms and has significantly smaller implementation footprint than any other secure cryptographic hash function. We expect to see it used in embedded, smart card, and Internet of Things (IoT) security applications. The design work of BLAKE was led by Jean-Philippe Aumasson, principal cryptographer at Kudelski Security, Switzerland. BLAKE2 is also described in the 2015 book “The Hash Function BLAKE”. For more information: http://blake2.net/