Federal Register / Vol. 72, No. 14 / Tuesday, January 23, 2007 / Notices 2861 

1 In this announcement, the term ‘‘has function’’

and ‘‘hash algorithm’’ are used interchangeably. 

or through the email hotline – vietnam–

texapp-monitor–hotline@mail.doc.gov. 

PRODUCT COVERAGE: The 

Department intends to monitor five 

product groups – trousers, shirts, 

underwear, swimwear and sweaters. 

However, the Department recognizes 

that these five product groups are too 

broad for effective monitoring. Within 

these five groups, the Department 

intends to focus on those traditional 

three–digit textile and apparel 

categories of greatest significance based 

on trade trends, composition of the U.S. 

industry and input from parties, as 

appropriate. In addition to gathering 

aggregate value data for each of the 

monitored three–digit categories, the 

Department intends to gather volume, 

value and average unit value data for 

selected products within those 

categories that will be collected and 

examined on a 10–digit Harmonized 

Tariff System (HTS) code basis. All data 

will be updated monthly and made 

available to the public on the Import 

Administration’s Office of Textile and 

Apparel website – http:// 

www.otexa.ita.doc.gov/. 

Product coverage is not intended by 

the Department necessarily to be static. 

Changes in product coverage may occur 

in response to input received from 

interested parties, changes in the trade, 

or as the Department broadens its 

understanding of the composition and 

structure of the domestic textile and 

apparel industry. Further, as the 

Department’s extends its knowledge of 

the domestic industry and the products 

it produces, as part of its monitoring, 

biannual evaluation and like product 

analysis, it intends to continue its 

interaction with stakeholders to allow 

for full comment and input. As part of 

this process, products may be added or 

removed from monitoring, as 

appropriate. 

PRODUCTION TEMPLATES: 

Production templates will be developed 

on an as–needed basis, as merited by the 

Department’s analysis of the monitored 

imports, and their impact on, and 

relation to, the domestic industry. In 

developing these templates, the 

Department intends to gather input from 

parties knowledgeable about the 

production process. Proxy countries, 

appropriate for the product being 

examined, will not be selected until that 

time. 

BIANNUAL EVALUATION: The 

Department intends to conduct its 

formal evaluation of the information 

gathered under the monitoring program 

on a biannual basis. Interim reviews are 

not expected to be conducted unless 

warranted by unforeseen developments. 

As explained above, public import 

data gathered by the Department as part 

of its monitoring program will be posted 

on the Import Administration website 

and updated monthly. Data will be 

reviewed at the 10–digit HTS level and 

shifts in product mix and seasonality 

will be considered when evaluating 

price and volume trends, as appropriate. 

In addition to analyzing import data as 

part of this review process, the 

Department will consider domestic 

industry information including 

production, employment and other 

indicators of industry health, to the 

extent relevant to the biannual 

evaluation process. 

SELF–INITIATION: Any self–initiation 

of an antidumping investigation arising 

from this program will be fully 

consistent with U.S. law as set forth in 

the statute and the Department’s 

regulations, and with the applicable 

WTO rules. 

CRITICAL CIRCUMSTANCES: Any 

application of critical circumstances in 

the context of a self–initiated 

investigation will be fully consistent 

with U.S. law, and with the applicable 

WTO rules. Should the Department find 

critical circumstances, suspension of 

liquidation would apply to unliquidated 

entries of merchandise entered, or 

withdrawn from warehouse, for 

consumption on or after the later of: 1) 

90 days before the date on which 

suspension of liquidation is first 

ordered; or 2) the date on which notice 

of the initiation of the investigation is 

published in the Federal Register 

(section 733(e)(2) of the Tariff Act of 

1930, as amended). 

NEW REPORTING REQUIREMENTS: 

There are no new paperwork or 

reporting requirements as a result of the 

Department’s monitoring program. 

Furthermore, all responses to the 

Department’s Federal Register notice 

requests for information, including this 

request, are strictly voluntary. 

Dated: January 17, 2007. 

David M. Spooner, 

Assistant Secretary for Import 

Administration. 

[FR Doc. E7–928 Filed 1–22–07; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 3510–DS–S 

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 

National Institute of Standards and 

Technology 

[Docket No.: 061213336–6336–01] 

Announcing the Development of New 

Hash Algorithm(s) for the Revision of 

Federal Information Processing 

Standard (FIPS) 180–2, Secure Hash 

Standard 

AGENCY: National Institute of Standards 

and Technology, Commerce. 

ACTION: Notice and request for 

comments. 

SUMMARY: A process to develop and 

standardize one or more new hash 

algorithms to augment and revise FIPS 

180–2, Secure Hash Standard, is being 

initiated by the National Institute of 

Standards and Technology (NIST). As a 

first step in this process, NIST is 

publishing draft minimum acceptability 

requirements, submission requirements, 

and evaluation criteria for candidate 

algorithms to solicit public comment. It 

is intended that the revised hash 

function standard will specify one or 

more additional unclassified, publicly 

disclosed hash algorithms that are 

available royalty-free worldwide, and 

are capable of protecting sensitive 

government information well into the 

foreseeable future. 

The purpose of this notice is to solicit 

comments on the draft minimum 

acceptability requirements, submission 

requirements, and evaluation criteria of 

candidate algorithms from the public, 

the cryptographic community, 

academic/research communities, 

manufacturers, voluntary standards 

organizations, and Federal, state, and 

local government organizations so that 

their needs can be considered in the 

process of developing the augmented 

and revised hash function standard. 

DATES: Comments must be received on 

or before April 27, 2007. 

ADDRESSES: Written comments should 

be sent to Mr. William Burr, Attn: Hash 

Algorithm Requirements and Evaluation 

Criteria, National Institute of Standards 

and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 

8930, Gaithersburg, MD 20899–8930. 

Electronic comments should be sent 

to hash-function@nist.gov with a subject 

line of ‘‘Hash Algorithm Requirements 

and Evaluation Criteria’’. 

Comments received in response to 

this notice will be made part of the 

public record and will be available for 

inspection on the Web site: http:// 

www.nist.gov/hash-function. 

mstockstill on PROD1PC70 with NOTICES

2862 Federal Register / Vol. 72, No. 14 / Tuesday, January 23, 2007 / Notices 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For 

general information, contact: Shu-jen 

Chang, National Institute of Standards 

and Technology, Stop 8930, 

Gaithersburg, MD 20899–8930; 

telephone 301–975–2940 or via fax at 

301–975–8670. 

Technical inquiries regarding the 

proposed draft acceptability 

requirements, submission requirements, 

and evaluation criteria should be sent 

electronically to hashfunction@nist.gov, or addressed to 

William Burr, National Institute of 

Standards and Technology, Stop 8930, 

Gaithersburg, MD 20899–8930; 

telephone 301–975–2914 or via fax at 

301–975–8670 (Attn: Hash Algorithm 

Requirements and Evaluation Criteria). 

Answers to germane questions will be 

posted at http://www.nist.gov/hashfunction. Questions and answers that 

are not pertinent to this announcement 

may not be posted. 

NIST will endeavor to answer all 

questions in a timely manner. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: A hash 

function takes binary data, called the 

message, and produces a condensed 

representation, called the message 

digest. A cryptographic hash function is 

a hash function that is designed to 

achieve certain security properties. The 

Federal Information Processing 

Standard 180–2, Secure Hash Standard 

specifies algorithms for computing four 

cryptographic hash functions—SHA–1, 

SHA–256, SHA–384, and SHA–512. 

FIPS 180–2 was issued in August, 2002, 

superseding FIPS 180–1. 

In recent years, several of the nonNIST approved cryptographic hash 

functions have been successfully 

attacked, and serious attacks have been 

published against SHA–1. In response, 

NIST held two public workshops on 

cryptographic hash functions, on Oct. 

31–Nov. 1, 2005 and Aug. 24–25, 2006, 

to assess the status of its approved hash 

functions and to solicit public input on 

its cryptographic hash function policy 

and standard. As a result of these 

workshops, NIST has decided to 

develop one or more additional hash 

functions through a public competition, 

similar to the development process for 

the Advanced Encryption Standard 

(AES). 

To begin the competition process, 

NIST has drafted the following 

minimum acceptability requirements, 

submission requirements, and 

evaluation criteria for candidate 

algorithms. NIST seeks comments on 

these draft minimum acceptability 

requirements, submission requirements, 

and evaluation criteria, as well as 

suggestions for other criteria and for the 

relative importance of each individual 

criterion in the evaluation process. 

Since neither the submission 

requirements nor the evaluation criteria 

have been finalized, and may evolve 

over time as a result of the public 

comments that NIST receives, candidate 

algorithms should NOT be submitted at 

this time. 

Authority: This work is being initiated 

pursuant to NIST’s responsibilities under the 

Federal Information Security Management 

Act (FISMA) of 2002, Public Law 107–347. 

A. Proposed Draft Minimum 

Acceptability Requirements for 

Candidate Algorithms 

The draft minimum acceptability 

requirements for candidate hash 

algorithms are: 

A.1 The algorithm must be publicly 

disclosed and available on a worldwide, 

non-exclusive, royalty-free basis. 

A.2 The algorithm must be 

implementable in a wide range of 

hardware and software platforms. 

A.3 The algorithm must support 

224, 256, 384, and 512-bit message 

digests, and must support a maximum 

message length of at least 264 bits. 

B. Proposed Draft Submission 

Requirements 

In order to provide for an orderly, fair, 

and timely evaluation of candidate 

algorithms, submission requirements 

will specify the procedures and 

supporting documentation necessary to 

submit a candidate algorithm. The 

submission package must include the 

following: 

B.1 A complete written specification 

of the algorithm, including any 

applicable mathematical equations, 

tables, and parameters that are needed 

to implement the algorithm. The 

documentation must include design 

rationale; an explanation for all the 

important design decisions; any security 

argument that is applicable, such as a 

security reduction proof; and a 

preliminary analysis, such as possible 

attack scenarios for collision-finding, 

second-preimage-finding, or any 

cryptographic attacks that have been 

considered and their results. 

In addition, the documentation 

should suggest one or more parameters 

of the algorithm that can be modified, or 

suggest other modification techniques, 

to enhance the security of the design. A 

supporting rationale should also be 

provided. For example, for SHA–1 the 

number of rounds is a natural parameter 

to modify to increase the security of the 

design. 

B.2 An ANSI C source language 

reference implementation and an 

optimized implementation. The 

optimized code will be used to compare 

software performance and memory 

requirements to the implementations of 

other submitted algorithms. 

B.3 A statement of the estimated 

computational efficiency and memory 

requirements in hardware and software 

across a variety of platforms, including 

8-, 32-, and 64-bit platforms. 

B.4 A hashing example that maps a 

specified message into its message 

digest. 

B.5 A statement of issued or pending 

patents that the submitter believes may 

be infringed by implementations of this 

algorithm. 

B.6 A statement of advantages and 

limitations of the submitted algorithm. 

If the submitter believes that the 

algorithm has certain advantageous 

features, then these should be listed and 

described, along with supporting 

rationale. 

Should NIST later decide to add such 

features to the evaluation criteria, 

submitters of candidate algorithms may 

be asked to provide additional 

information with respect to these new 

criteria. 

(End of draft submission requirements) 

C. Proposed Draft Evaluation Criteria of 

Candidate Algorithms 

Candidate algorithms that meet the 

minimum acceptability requirements 

and the submission requirements will 

be compared, based on the following 

factors: 

• Security, 

• Computational efficiency, 

• Memory requirements, 

• Hardware and software suitability, 

• Simplicity, 

• Flexibility, and 

• Licensing requirements. 

With the exception of self-explanatory 

items in the above list, these evaluation 

criteria are described below. 

C.1 Security 

Algorithms will be judged on the 

following factors: 

• The actual security provided by the 

algorithm as compared to other 

submitted algorithms (of the same hash 

length), including (but not limited to) 

first and second preimage resistance, 

collision resistance, and resistance to 

generic attacks (e.g., length extension). 

• The extent to which the algorithm 

output is indistinguishable from a 

random oracle. 

• The soundness of the mathematical 

basis for the algorithm’s security. 

• Other security factors raised by the 

public during the evaluation process, 

including any attacks which 

demonstrate that the actual security of 

the algorithm is less than the strength 

claimed by the submitter. 

mstockstill on PROD1PC70 with NOTICES

Federal Register / Vol. 72, No. 14 / Tuesday, January 23, 2007 / Notices 2863 

Claimed attacks will be evaluated for 

practicality. 

C.2 Cost 

C.2.1 Computational efficiency: The 

evaluation of computational efficiency 

will be applicable to both hardware and 

software implementations. 

Computational efficiency essentially 

refers to the throughput of an 

implementation. NIST will use the 

optimized software of each submission 

(discussed in B.2 above) on a variety of 

platforms and analyze their 

computation efficiency for a variety of 

message lengths. The data in the 

submission packages and any public 

comments on computational efficiency 

will also be taken into consideration. 

C.2.2 Memory requirements: The 

memory required for hardware and 

software implementations of the 

candidate algorithm will be considered 

during the evaluation process. 

Memory requirements will include 

such factors as gate counts for hardware 

implementations, and code size and 

RAM requirements for software 

implementations. 

NIST will use the optimized software 

of each submission (discussed in B.2 

above) on a variety of platforms and test 

their memory requirements for a variety 

of message lengths. The data in the 

submission packages and any public 

comments on memory requirements will 

also be taken into consideration. 

C.3 Algorithm and Implementation 

Characteristics 

C.3.1 Flexibility: Candidate 

algorithms with greater flexibility that 

meet the needs of more users are 

preferable. Some examples of 

‘‘flexibility’’ include (but are not limited 

to) the following: 

i. The algorithm is parameterizable, 

e.g. can accommodate additional 

rounds. 

ii. Implementations of the algorithm 

can be parallelized to achieve higher 

performance efficiency. 

iii. The algorithm can be implemented 

securely and efficiently in a wide 

variety of platforms, including 

constrained environments such as smart 

cards. 

C.3.2 Simplicity: A candidate 

algorithm will be judged according to 

relative simplicity of design. 

Dated: January 16, 2007. 

James E. Hill, 

Acting Deputy Director. 

[FR Doc. E7–927 Filed 1–22–07; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 3510–CN–P 

DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE 

National Oceanic and Atmospheric 

Administration 

[Docket No. 070108002–7002–01; I.D. 

122706A] 

Listing Endangered and Threatened 

Species and Designating Critical 

Habitat: Petition to List Copper and 

Quillback Rockfishes in Puget Sound 

(Washington) as Threatened Species 

under the Endangered Species Act 

AGENCY: National Marine Fisheries 

Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and 

Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 

Commerce. 

ACTION: Notice of finding. 

SUMMARY: We, NMFS, have received a 

petition to list copper rockfish (Sebastes 

caurinus) and quillback rockfish (S. 

maliger) in Puget Sound (Washington) 

as threatened or endangered species 

under the Endangered Species Act 

(ESA). We find that the petition does 

not present substantial scientific or 

commercial information indicating that 

the petitioned actions may be 

warranted. 

ADDRESSES: Copies of the petition and 

related materials are available on the 

Internet at http://www.nwr.noaa.gov/ 

Other-Marine-Species/PS-MarineFishes.cfm, or upon request from the 

Chief, Protected Resources Division, 

NMFS, 1201 NE Lloyd Boulevard, Suite 

1100, Portland, OR 97232. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Dr. 

Scott Rumsey, NMFS, Northwest 

Region, (503) 872–2791; or Marta 

Nammack, NMFS, Office of Protected 

Resources, (301) 713–1401. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

Background 

On September 18, 2006, we received 

a petition from Mr. Sam Wright 

(Olympia, Washington) to list the Puget 

Sound Distinct Population Segments 

(DPSs) of copper and quillback rockfish 

as endangered or threatened species 

under the ESA. Copies of this petition 

are available from NMFS (see 

ADDRESSES, above). 

ESA Statutory and Policy Provisions 

Section 4(b)(3) of the ESA contains 

provisions concerning petitions from 

interested persons requesting the 

Secretary of Commerce (Secretary) to 

list species under the ESA (16 U.S.C. 

1533(b)(3)(A)). Section 4(b)(3)(A) 

requires that, to the maximum extent 

practicable, within 90 days after 

receiving such a petition, the Secretary 

make a finding whether the petition 

presents substantial scientific or 

commercial information indicating that 

the petitioned action may be warranted. 

Our ESA implementing regulations 

define Asubstantial information@ as the 

amount of information that would lead 

a reasonable person to believe that the 

measure proposed in the petition may 

be warranted. In evaluating a petitioned 

action, the Secretary considers whether 

the petition contains a detailed narrative 

justification for the recommended 

measure, including: past and present 

numbers and distribution of the species 

involved, and any threats faced by the 

species (50 CFR 424.14(b)(2)(ii)); and 

information regarding the status of the 

species throughout all or a significant 

portion of its range (50 CFR 

424.14(b)(2)(iii)). 

Under the ESA, a listing 

determination may address a species, 

subspecies, or a DPS of any vertebrate 

species which interbreeds when mature 

(16 U.S.C. 1532(15)). On February 7, 

1996, we and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife 

Service (USFWS) adopted a policy to 

clarify the agencies’ interpretation of the 

phrase ‘‘Distinct population segment of 

any species of vertebrate fish or 

wildlife’’ (ESA section 3(15)) for the 

purposes of listing, delisting, and 

reclassifying a species under the ESA 

(51 FR 4722). The joint DPS policy 

established two criteria that must be met 

for a population or group of populations 

to be considered a DPS: (1) The 

population segment must be discrete in 

relation to the remainder of the species 

(or subspecies) to which it belongs; and 

(2) the population segment must be 

significant to the remainder of the 

species (or subspecies) to which it 

belongs. 

A species, subspecies, or DPS is 

‘‘endangered’’ if it is in danger of 

extinction throughout all or a significant 

portion of its range, and ‘‘threatened’’ if 

it is likely to become endangered within 

the foreseeable future throughout all or 

a significant portion of its range (ESA 

Sections 3(6) and 3(19), respectively). 

Life History of Copper and Quillback 

Rockfish 

Copper Rockfish - Copper rockfish are 

found from the Gulf of Alaska 

southward to central Baja California 

(Eschmeyer et al., 1983; Stein and 

Hassler, 1989; Matthews, 1990a; Love, 

1991), including in Puget Sound 

(Buckley and Hueckel, 1985; Quinnel 

and Schmitt, 1991). Adult copper 

rockfish are found in nearshore waters 

from the surface to 183 m deep 

(Eschmeyer et al., 1983; Stein and 

Hassler, 1989). Larval and small 

juvenile copper rockfish are pelagic for 

several months and are frequently found 

mstockstill on PROD1PC70 with NOTICES