'Collision' attack by researchers at CWI Institute and Google underscores need to retire SHA-1.
The aging cryptographic hash function SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) has suffered what some experts consider its final blow today as researchers from Google and the CWI Institute revealed that they had found a practical way to break SHA-1.
SHA-1 long has been considered obsolete, and most major browser vendors plan to halt accepting SHA-1 based certificates this year due to its relatively weaker crypto scheme than the newer SHA-2 and SHA-3 standards.
Google and CWI engineered a collision attack against SHA-1, demonstrating two PDF files with the same SHA-1 hash and different content as a proof-of-concept of their findings.
"For the tech community, our findings emphasize the necessity of sunsetting SHA-1 usage. Google has advocated the deprecation of SHA-1 for many years, particularly when it comes to signing TLS certificates. As early as 2014, the Chrome team announced that they would gradually phase out using SHA-1. We hope our practical attack on SHA-1 will cement that the protocol should no longer be considered secure," Google said in a blog post today. "We hope that our practical attack against SHA-1 will finally convince the industry that it is urgent to move to safer alternatives such as SHA-256."
See Google's post here for more details on the PoC.
About the Author(s)
You May Also Like
Guarding the Cloud: Top 5 Cloud Security Hacks and How You Can Avoid Them
April 4, 2024Cybersecurity Strategies for Small and Med Sized Businesses
April 11, 2024Defending Against Today's Threat Landscape with MDR
April 18, 2024Securing Code in the Age of AI
April 24, 2024
Black Hat USA - August 3-8 - Learn More
August 3, 2024Cybersecurity's Hottest New Technologies: What You Need To Know
March 21, 2024Black Hat Asia - April 16-19 - Learn More
April 16, 2024