Research Team Identifies Serious SHA-1 Flaw in Digital Signatures

Security experts are warning that a security flaw has been found in a powerful data encryption algorithm, dubbed SHA-1, by a team of scientists from Shandong University in China. The three scientists are circulating a paper within the cryptographic research community that describes successful tests of a technique that could greatly reduce the speed with which SHA-1 could be compromised.

Although the cracking technique could not be carried out practically, it does compromise the integrity of the algorithm and could lead to more advanced attacks that would render SHA-1 useless, affecting many Internet security products that use it to generate digital signatures, according to Bruce Schneier, founder and chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security.

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