Now that we have your attention, let’s hear that again, in English this time! A 41-year old Chinese college professor at the University of Beijing has cracked the world’s toughest computer encryption program, the SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm). For those of you who slept in the back of class, the SHA-1 is the U.S. Government’s most advanced data encryption program. This action has apparently tasked the Government’s highest level programmers with replacing this now faulty program within the next five years.
Whoa! Cracking the code, however, doesn’t mean that it is open season for the “bad guys”. The odds were truly stacked against Professor Wang Xiaoyun in the first place- about equivalent to winning Powerball several times! A Beijing Digest has indicated that this SHA-1 encryption incorporates the world’s highest security Message-Digest algorithm 5 (MD5). Before Professor Wang cracked it, the MD5 could only be deciphered by the fastest existing supercomputer processing in excess of a million years.
So how did the Professor do it? Although encryption analysis usually cannot be done without the use of computers, according to Wang, the computer only assisted in cracking the algorithm. Most of the time, Wang Xiaoyun calculated manually, and manually designed the methods.
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