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Cryptology Academy · Lesson

SHA-1 & SHA-2 Family Explained

Understand SHA-1's weakness and how SHA-256 and SHA-512 differ.

Welcome

SHA-1 and SHA-2 are the NSA-designed successors to MD5. SHA-1 is now retired. SHA-256 and SHA-512 remain the industry standard for most applications.

SHA-1 Overview

SHA-1 produces a 160-bit (20-byte) hash. Designed by NSA, published 1995. Example: SHA1('hello') = aaf4c61ddcc5e8a2dabede0f3b482cd9aea9434d

All lessons in this course

  1. What Makes a Good Hash Function
  2. MD5: History, Uses & Why It Is Broken
  3. SHA-1 & SHA-2 Family Explained
  4. Hash Applications: Checksums, HMAC & Git
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