We propose a chaotic hash algorithm based on circular shifts with variable parameters in this paper. We exploit piecewise linear chaotic map and one-way coupled map lattice to produce initial values and variable parameters. Circular shifts are introduced to improve the randomness of hash values. We evaluate the proposed hash algorithm in terms of distribution of the hash value, sensitivity of the hash value to slight modifications of the original message and secret keys, confusion and diffusion properties, robustness against birthday and meet-in-the-middle attacks, collision tests, analysis of speed, randomness tests, flexibility, computational complexity, and the results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has strong security strength. Compared with the existing chaotic hash algorithms, our algorithm shows moderate statistical performance, better speed, randomness tests, and flexibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]