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Since the discovery of collision attacks against several well known cryptographic hash functions in 2004 there has been a rush of new cryptanalytic results that cast doubt on our current hash function standards. The relatively new NIST SHA-2 standards are not yet immediately threatened, but their long term viability is now questioned. NIST has therefore begun an international competition to select a new SHA-3 standard. This article outlines the competition, its rules, the requirements for the hash function candidates, and the process that NIST will use to select the final winning SHA-3 standard.