RIPEMD-160 (RACE Integrity Primitives Evaluation Message Digest) is a 160-bit message digest algorithm (and cryptographic hash function) developed in Europe by Hans Dobbertin, Antoon Bosselaers and Bart Preneel, and first published in 1996. It is an improved version of RIPEMD, which in turn was based upon the design principles used in MD4, and is similar in performance to the more popular SHA-1.