A three-person Chinese research team, comprised of mainly researchers from Shandong University in China, have broken the SHA-1 encryption algorithm. SHA is a popular one-way hash algorithm used to create digital signatures, and was developed by the NIST, and SHA-1 is a revision to the standard released in 1994. SHA-1 has been a method of encryption that has been in common use for the last nine years. Now, serious questions will be asked about its future effectiveness as a security measure.

This attack builds on previous attacks on SHA-0 and SHA-1, and is a major, major cryptanalytic result.... The attack pretty much put a bullet into SHA -1 as a hash function for digital signatures, even though it is beyond the scope of most criminals to exploit.