Thomas Roth to Reveal Crack of SHA-1 Algorithm
German hacker Thomas Roth's announcement that he used Amazon.com's (Nasdaq: AMZN) cloud service to crack a wireless network security standard has left some security researchers scratching their heads. Others are merely shaking them in disbelief.
That attack was launched against the SHA-1 hash algorithm. Roth's conclusions are that the SHA-1 algorithm is not fit for password hashing, and the compute power offered by cloud services makes it cheap and easy to launch brute-force attacks on passwords.
However, it's been known since 2005 that the SHA-1 algorithm has flaws, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology is seeking to replace it. Also, undertaking a brute-force attack using the cloud can be costly. "The cloud is certainly the fastest way to stand up many computers hammering on the same brute-force problem," Shawn Edmondson, director of product management for rPath, told TechNewsWorld."But that power doesn't come cheap."
