SHA-1 on the ropes

heise Security: SHA-1 hash function under pressure.

This can be a big thing. SHA-1 is beside MD5 (of which we heard some shaky reports last year) the most commonly used hash function. Almost anything that involves cryptography uses hashing in some way.

A successful attack on SHA-1 where the attacker can create identical hashes at will would be devastating. We’ll have to wait and see when there is something published.