The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has opened a competition to develop a new cryptographic “hash” algorithm, a tool that converts a file, message or block of data to a short “fingerprint” for use in digital signatures, message authentication and other computer security applications.

Cryptography is just about as old as written communication itself, and mathematics has long supplied methods for the cryptographic toolbox. Starting in the 1970s, increasingly sophisticated mathematics began to make inroads into cryptography, changing the nature of the field and bringing new perspectives on what it means to keep communications secure.