Bitgesell - Keccak & SHA-3

 

Bitgesell - Keccak & SHA-3

High Level Security for your money!

Imagine Bitgesell is like a piggy bank, and it needs a special lock to keep your money safe. Keccak SHA-3 is like the super-duper lock for the Bitgesell piggy bank.

Whenever you put some coins into your Bitgesell piggy bank, the Keccak SHA-3 lock helps make sure your coins are protected. It does this by turning all the information about your coins into a secret code that nobody else can understand. So, even if someone tries to peek into your piggy bank, they won't know how much money you have because it's all hidden behind this special lock.

And when you want to take out your coins, the Keccak SHA-3 lock helps make sure that the coins are really yours and not someone else's. It checks the secret code to make sure everything is safe before you can get your money.

So, in simple terms, Keccak SHA-3 is like the guardian lock that keeps your Bitgesell piggy bank safe, making sure your coins are secure and only you can access them.

Deep Explanation

Keccak and SHA-3, cryptographic hash functions, were developed by a team of researchers led by Guido Bertoni, Joan Daemen, Michaël Peeters, and Gilles Van Assche.

Technical Overview

Keccak is a family of cryptographic hash functions, and SHA-3 (Secure Hash Algorithm 3) is based on the Keccak construction. SHA-3 was selected as the winner of a NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) competition to develop a new cryptographic hash function standard, following concerns about the security of existing hash functions like SHA-1 and SHA-2.

SHA-3 uses the Keccak sponge construction, which provides resistance against various cryptographic attacks. It is designed to produce a fixed-length hash value from input data, making it suitable for applications like data integrity verification, digital signatures, and more. SHA-3 comes in various output sizes (e.g., SHA-3-224, SHA-3-256, SHA-3-384, and SHA-3-512), depending on the desired security level and hash length. It's important to use the correct version and output size of SHA-3 for your specific security requirements.

High Security Level

Design Philosophy: Keccak was designed to be a flexible and secure cryptographic primitive. It is based on a cryptographic primitive called a "sponge construction," which allows it to be used for a wide range of cryptographic applications, not just hashing. This flexibility was one of the reasons it was chosen as SHA-3.

Security: Keccak was designed with a strong emphasis on security. The SHA-3 competition organized by NIST aimed to select a hash function that could resist various types of attacks, including collision attacks, pre-image attacks, and second pre-image attacks. Keccak's design demonstrated strong security properties, which contributed to its selection as SHA-3.

Highly Customizable: Keccak allows you to choose different output sizes (e.g., SHA-3-224, SHA-3-256, SHA-3-384, and SHA-3-512) to match your security requirements. This flexibility makes it suitable for various applications in cryptography.

Performance: Keccak's design is efficient and can be implemented in software and hardware with good performance characteristics. It's designed to work well on a wide range of computing platforms.

In summary, Keccak SHA-3 is the result of careful design and analysis by a group of talented cryptographers, and it was chosen as the new standard for cryptographic hashing by NIST due to its strong security properties and flexibility. It plays a crucial role in ensuring the security of various applications, including cryptocurrencies like Bitgesell.

More information:

https://en.bitcoinwiki.org/wiki/SHA-3