Comments on: SHA-1 kracked! https://rose.geog.mcgill.ca/wordpress/?p=86 Tue, 22 Feb 2005 04:37:38 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.10 By: liam https://rose.geog.mcgill.ca/wordpress/?p=86&cpage=1#comment-259 Tue, 22 Feb 2005 04:37:38 +0000 /?p=86#comment-259 Mmm, SHA-1 is actually a hash, not encryption so to speak. A hash takes input, and then fairly quickly and easily produces an output, what makes them generally nifty is that it’s supposed to be very hard to both figure out what the input was given the output, as well as very hard to get two different inputs to produce the same output (a collision). What the researchers in China did was to develop a technique to make it slightly easier to find a collision. Lucky for us, slightly easier still means it would take a very powerful computer quite a while to find a collision.

So, we now move slowly and calmly towards new and more complicated hashing algorithms. : )

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