Abstract. In this article, it is discussed how to construct a compression function with 2n-bit output using a component function with n-bit output. The component function is either a smaller compression function or a block cipher. Some constructions are presented which compose collision-resistant hash functions: Any collision-finding attack on them is at most as efficient as a birthday attack in the random oracle model or in the ideal cipher model. A new security notion is also introduced, which we call indistinguishability in the iteration, with a construction satisfying the notion.