IEEE Spectrum December, 2012 - 13

4.4 mIllIoN

Number of It jobs that "big data" will generate by 2015, according to
peter Sondergaard, global head of research at Gartner.

toP: henrIk Jonsson/istockPhoto; Bottom: PatrIck P. mercIer

digest. Block-cipher technology
time, the IT industry was
is "something we understand
concerned that the current
very well and have been doing
cryptographic standard, called
for a long time," says Polk.
Secure Hash Algorithm-2
In contrast, Keccak uses a
(SHA-2), was on the verge of
"sponge function," a technique
being cracked. Its predecessors
that didn't even exist when
were falling like flies, and the
SHA-2 was invented. Rather
cryptographic community feared
than processing data in blocks,
that there wouldn't be enough
Keccak applies a permutation
time to invent a new algorithm
process-a rearranging-
before SHA-2 fell as well.
absorbing all the data and then
But SHA-2 proved a
squeezing out a fingerprint ,
lot tougher than expected.
says Van Assche, senior security
"The train wreck that we feared
engineer at STMicroelectronics.
never happened," says Tim Polk,
Because its design is such
manager of the cryptographic
a departure from those of
technology group at NIST. "One
previous algorithms, Keccak
of the things we learned [in the
is not susceptible to the same
course of the competition] is that
SHA-2 is a really good algorithm." methods of code cracking, says
Polk. That makes it an excellent
As a result, when Keccak (also
alternative and ensures that
known as SHA-3) was crowned
if either SHA-2 or Keccak is
in mid-October, the news was
broken, the other will likely
met with a big "So what?"
stand strong to take its place.
But Keccak is an important
In addition, Keccak's design
advance, argues Polk, because
makes it particularly useful in
it uses an entirely different
embedded applications, which
technique from previous
require small chips that use
cryptographic algorithms.
very little power. According
SHA-2 and its predecessors are
based on block-cipher technology. to Polk, a circuit that executes
Keccak would use less real
They use a compression function
estate on a semiconductor
to process fixed-length blocks
than one that performs SHA-2,
of data and then generate a
spectrum.ieee.org

while still providing good
performance at low cost.
But no one really knows
how, whether, or when the new
algorithm could be used. Its
very existence might open up
some new possibilities, says
Polk: "Sometimes you find that
when you get algorithms with
new properties, then you get new
innovative applications that maybe
people never pursued before."
Another benefit of the competition was that it proved the strength
of SHA-2. Having the cryptographic community hack away at
SHA-2 for five years without finding any weaknesses has increased
confidence in it. "In cryptography,
it's much easier to say something
is broken than it is to say something's secure," Polk says. In fact,
NIST is recommending that companies stick with SHA-2 rather
than adopt the new algorithm.
"If people are already using SHA-2,
we strongly encourage them to
stay with it," says Polk. "There is
no reason to abandon SHA-2."
Bob Cromwell, an engineer
who runs his own computer
consulting business, agrees.
Ensuring that organizations
are running even SHA-2 is
still an issue. This year, for
example, the authors of a
piece of malware called Flame
were able to forge a code-signing
certificate in Windows, because
Microsoft had not disabled the use
of an old hash algorithm, MD5, in
parts of its operating system. The
attackers were able to generate a
false certificate, which opened the
way for them to distribute the malware to Windows computers as if
it were an update from Microsoft.
"Our biggest problem is not
trying to push the leading edge-
it's pulling the lagging tail forward,"
says Cromwell.
-Tam Harbert

news
briefs
Ear Power
There's a natural
battery in your ear,
and doctors and
engineers at MIT
and Harvard have
devised a way to use
it to power a wireless
transmitter. They
tapped into a chemical gradient in the
inner ears of guinea
pigs, where the
voltage difference
is higher than in any
other part of a mammal's body. What
they got out was
about 1 nanowatt.
That was too
small for even their
ultralow-power
radio chip, so they
designed a power
conversion system
that could gather
enough charge to
operate the radio
once every 40 seconds to 4 minutes.

december 2012 * Ieee Spectrum * NA

13
http://spectrum.ieee.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum December, 2012
