NOTHING lasts for ever, and especially not in the digital world. The gold standard security algorithm that underpins online transactions has been broken by researchers. But don’t panic yet – even the most serious hackers lack the necessary computing power to repeat the feat.
The algorithm in question, SHA-1, works by reducing a digital file to a 160-bit string of data known as a hash. The hash is considered unique and acts as a legal time stamp or digital signature. The fail-safe was that a computer would have to run SHA-1 on 280 files before finding two that produced…
