Which of the following is true? A) SHA-2 is a set of cryptographic hash function

Question

Which of the following is true?

A) SHA-2 is a set of cryptographic hash functions designed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and published in 2001 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as a U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS).

B) SHA-2 digests (checksums) are 224, 256, 384 or 512 bits.

C) We should unquestioningly trust NSA provided cryptographic hash functions because the NSA has never hidden "back doors" to enable easy unauthorized decryption by governmental organizations.

D) Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Software Engineering Institute (SEI) now says that SHA-2 "should be considered cryptographically broken and unsuitable for further use.”

1. A and B

2. C, and D

3. A, B, and D

4. A, B, and C

Explanation / Answer

Which of the following is true?
A) SHA-2 is a set of cryptographic hash functions designed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and published in 2001 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as a U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS).

B) SHA-2 digests (checksums) are 224, 256, 384 or 512 bits.

C) We should unquestioningly trust NSA provided cryptographic hash functions because the NSA has never hidden "back doors" to enable easy unauthorized decryption by governmental organizations.

D) Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) Software Engineering Institute (SEI) now says that SHA-2 "should be considered cryptographically broken and unsuitable for further use.”

Answer: Option 4. A, B, and C

Explanation:

The Secure Hash Algorithms are a family of cryptographic hash functions published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as a U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS), including:
SHA-0: A retronym applied to the original version of the 160-bit hash function published in 1993 under the name "SHA". It was withdrawn shortly after publication due to an undisclosed "significant flaw" and replaced by the slightly revised version SHA-1.
SHA-1: A 160-bit hash function which resembles the earlier MD5 algorithm. This was designed by the National Security Agency (NSA) to be part of the Digital Signature Algorithm. Cryptographic weaknesses were discovered in SHA-1, and the standard was no longer approved for most cryptographic uses after 2010.
SHA-2: A family of two similar hash functions, with different block sizes, known as SHA-256 and SHA-512. They differ in the word size; SHA-256 uses 32-bit words where SHA-512 uses 64-bit words. There are also truncated versions of each standard, known as SHA-224, SHA-384, SHA-512/224 and SHA-512/256. These were also designed by the NSA.
SHA-3: A hash function formerly called Keccak, chosen in 2012 after a public competition among non-NSA designers. It supports the same hash lengths as SHA-2, and its internal structure differs significantly from the rest of the SHA family.

In cryptography the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA), SHA-2 is a set of cryptographic hash functions

(SHA-224, SHA256,SHA-384, and SHA-512) designed by the National Security Agency (NSA) and published in 2001 by the NIST as a U.S.

Federal Information Processing Standard. SHA stands for Secure Hash Algorithm. SHA-2 includes a significant number of changes from its predecessor, SHA-1. In October 2012, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) chose a new algorithm (Keccak) as the
SHA-3 standard

US-CERT has advised that MD5 "should be considered cryptographically broken and unsuitable for further use” and most U.S. enterprise applications now require the SHA-2 family of hash functions. For this reason, MD-5 is not to be used in standalone operations but may be used in HashMAC (HMAC) construction for TLS

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