Kittens v Kangaroos

In [1], Jean-Philippe (JP) Aumasson proposes that we reduce the number of rounds in SHA-3 (Keccak) from 24 to just 10 rounds, and names it KitTen (get it … “10”). This, he proposes, would create a speedup of 2.4 times. JP’s focus is that it is possible to reduce the number of rounds within a given cryptography method without compromising security, and which then improves the overall performance of the method. He also proposes that we could reduce the number of rounds from 12 to 8 for the BLAKE2b hashing method, and with a resulting 1.5×speed-up [here]:

BLAKE2, BLAKE2b, Keccak and KangerooTwelve

The problem with competitions is that the winner will often take all, until the next competition. Those competing could thus get better than the winner, but it is often too late. So let’s look at the SHA-3 competition, and how things have evolved.

NIST created a competition for SHA-3, and it was Keccak that was crowned the champion. Since then, SHA-3 has received good adoption levels, but you’ll also see BLAKE2 — one of the finalists — being used in many applications. Keccak won because it was fast, and where BLAKE2 was submitted too late to compete against it. Since many…