Heverlee, 10 September 1996

Dear Dr. Dobb's Journal,

Please find enclosed our article `The new cryptographic hash function
RIPEMD-160' that we submit for publication in Dr. Dobb's. RIPEMD-160 is a
new cryptographic hash function aimed at replacing MD4 (which has been
broken as a collision-resistant hash function) and MD5 (the security of
which has to be questioned in view of recent developments in cryptanalysis).
MD5 was described in Dr. Dobb's Journal in the September 1991 issue (One-way
hash functions, by Bruce Schneier), and cryptographic algorithms regularly
feature in your journal (both in `Algorithm Alley', as well as in individual
articles, e.g., `The RC5 Encryption Algorithm' by Ron Rivest in the January
1995 issue). A secure cryptographic hash function is an essential building
block in many cryptographic systems. The demise of MD4 and the impending
demise of MD5 means there aren't too many secure ones around anymore. We
feel RIPEMD-160 is such a secure cryptographic hash function.

Kindest regards,
Antoon Bosselaers
Hans Dobbertin
Bart Preneel

Contacting us:
Antoon Bosselaers
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Department of Electrical Engineering
Kard. Mercierlaan 94
B-3001 Heverlee
Belgium
Phone: +32 16 32 11 48
Email: antoon.bosselaers@esat.kuleuven.ac.be

The submission consists of the following files:

drdobbs2.tex: the Latex source of our article (including figure and listings)
drdobbs2.ps:  a postscript version of our article
drdobbs2.txt: the article in plain text format (ASCII) without the figure
              end listings.
figure.ps:    a postscript version of the figure
rmd160.c:     the C source of RIPEMD-160 (Listing 1)
rmd160.h:     the include file of the C implementation (Listing 2)
A hard-copy printout will be sent to you by ordinary mail.
