SHA-3 will be born soon

As Bruce Schneier reports in his blog, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) of the USA is going to present a new hash algorithm, which will be called SHA-3, in a short time.

For the right to compete in the final for the title of the new SHA-3, NIST chose 5 finalists : BLAKE, Grøstl, JH, Keccak, and Skein . The latter is the brainchild of Bruce Schneier himself.

According to Schneier, there is no candidate among the finalists with a clear advantage: some are faster than others, but not by orders of magnitude. Of course, Schneier would like his own algorithm to win the race. But only from a sense of pride, and not for objective reasons.
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Bruce Schneier also notes that the SHA family of algorithms is under increasing pressure from new types of cryptanalysis (but does not specify which ones). And it's hard to say how long different types of SHA-2 will remain safe. Although it is already 2012, and using SHA-512 is still not such a bad idea.

The exact date of the announcement of what algorithm SHA-3 will call is unknown. The NIST website says a bit vaguely that this will be in 2012:

NIST also plans later in 2012