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Chinese Prof Cracks SHA-1 Data Encryption Scheme

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the mad-math dept.

Hades1010 writes to mention an article in the Epoch Times (a Chinese newspaper) about a brilliant Chinese professor who has cracked her fifth encryption scheme in ten years. This one's a doozy, too: she and her team have taken out the SHA-1 scheme, which includes the (highly thought of) MD5 algorithm. As a result, the U.S. government and major corporations will cease using the scheme within the next few years. From the article: " These two main algorithms are currently the crucial technology that electronic signatures and many other password securities use throughout the international community. They are widely used in banking, securities, and e-commerce. SHA-1 has been recognized as the cornerstone for modern Internet security. According to the article, in the early stages of Wang's research, there were other data encryption researchers who tried to crack it. However, none of them succeeded. This is why in 15 years Hash research had become the domain of hopeless research in many scientists' minds. "

6 of 416 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Whoops. by eosp · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I do not see how religion has to do with this one. Also, if you want real, somewhat efficient hashing, just take the MD5, take the SHA-1, and concatenate them.

  2. Re:Whoops. by fyngyrz · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Religion in the sense of dogma. "It can't be done", "hopeless", etc. as described in the summary. Rather than try to actually examine the issue at hand, those people took the dogma and tread water. The Chinese researcher used science and got the results the others were taking from the book of common presumption. It's a religious approach against a scientific approach in the most common sense of the word. With the caveat that we assume that the story is true, of course. This is slashdot... :)

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  3. Re:How long until... by drgonzo59 · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Because they are paid to do nothing. If their research was meaningful and worthy they should be paid for it while they were doing it. Why not instead reward those who actually research something or produce something useful.

    Wouldn't your rather spend your tax money paying somebody who is finding a cure for cancer instead of paying somebody to sit around do nothing because they published stuff 20 years ago? What now they are too stupid to publish or not able to research anymore? -- No, they are just lazy. I don't see any reason whatsoever to reward laziness.

  4. BAD JOURNALISM by MilesNaismith · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    What moron approved this poorly-written and inaccurate story? Oh wait this is Slashdot.....

  5. Re:Not so fast. by youguessedit · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Has this even been confirmed? I live in Shanghai, and not everything that shows up in the news is true (i'm shocked, shocked!). There was just a professor here a while ago who was taking credit for "Chinese-developed CPUs". He got national awards, grant money, the whole works for years. Too bad he was literally just scratching the logo off another brand of chip (I forget which one).

  6. Her blog even mentions slashdot and Rob in 2005 by cheekyboy · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    http://www.ningning.org/blog/?m=200503

    Btw re Firefox, why cant firefox 100% cache slashdot images and never re-read them from the server, or at last check weekly ONCE!!

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