SHA-1 is a cryptographic hash function designed by the U.S. Government as a Federal Information Processing Standard. Recently, collisions have been detected, meaning that SHA1 is becoming more vulnerable to attacks, and its use for protecting data is not recommended.
NOTE: Sha1 is no longer secure due to collisions being found. It is recommended you use sha2 or another hashing system like bcrypt
In cryptography, SHA-1 is a cryptographic hash function designed by the National Security Agency (NSA) and published by the NIST as a U.S. Federal Information Processing Standard. SHA stands for Secure Hash Algorithm. The three SHA algorithms are structured differently and are distinguished as SHA-0, SHA-1, and SHA-2. SHA-1 is very similar to SHA-0, but corrects an error in the original SHA hash specification that led to significant weaknesses. The SHA-0 algorithm was not adopted by many applications. SHA-2 on the other hand significantly differs from the SHA-1 hash function.
SHA-1 is the most widely used of the existing SHA hash functions, and is employed in several widely-used security applications and protocols. In 2005, security flaws were identified in SHA-1, namely that a mathematical weakness might exist, indicating that a stronger hash function would be desirable. Although no successful attacks have yet been reported on the SHA-2 variants, they are algorithmically similar to SHA-1 and so efforts are underway to develop improved alternatives. A new hash standard, SHA-3, is currently under development — an ongoing NIST hash function competition is scheduled to end with the selection of a winning function in 2012.
References:
