Hashing Algorithms

As the hashing algorithms are not as computationally intensive as the RSA and DSA algorithms it is not always advantageous to use hardware devices to perform these operations (The overhead of using the hardware device can actually outweigh the potential performance gains, but the cryptographic operations are processed off of the main CPU). Further the overall security of performing these hashing algorithms on hardware is not substantially better then doing the same hash in software (as the hash is then typically used within a more secure RSA or DSA sign or verify algorithm).

The IBMPKCS11Impl provider will call the hardware device to perform MD2, MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512 hashing. Of course these operations are limited to what the hardware device actually supports.