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Information Technology Blog
by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

SHA-1 to Die in Early 2016 – Security vs. Usability

December 14, 2015

SHA-1 is a cryptographic hashing algorithm that is used in securing a lot of digital certificates used for SSL transmissions. The bad news is that SHA-1 will no longer be supported by modern browsers starting in early 2016. This means that tens of millions of users will be cut off from secure sites on the Internet. We’re all concerned about security. The Internet is a very dangerous place, hence the move to abandoning SHA-1 for the much more secure SHA-256 algorithm. Facebook claims that this move will impact as much as seven percent of the Internet users because they use older, less secure software. Wow! A whole seven percent. Sorry, but that doesn’t sound too bad to me. Frankly, I don’t care if Facebook loses seven percent of its user base. After all…”The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”

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Digital Forensics/Information Security/Information Technology
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