On Security Arguments of the Second Round SHA-3 Candidates

In 2007, the US National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) announced a call for the design of a new cryptographic hash algorithm in response to vulnerabilities like differential attacks identified in existing hash functions, such as MD5 and SHA-1. NIST received many submissions, 51 of which got accepted to the first round. 14 candidates were left in the second round, out of which 5 candidates have been recently chosen for the final round. An important criterion in the selection process is the SHA-3 hash function security.