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Long rumored and now official, the popular SHA-1 hashing
algorithm has been attacked successfully by researchers in China
and the US. A collision has been discovered in the full version
in 269 hash operations, making it just possible to mount a
successful brute-force attack with the most powerful machines
available today.  This is by no means a disaster in practical
terms, as the amount of computational power and mathematical
insight needed to perform a successful attack is still great.
But SHA-1 has been demonstrated not to be beyond the reach of
current supercomputers, as had previously been believed, or at
least hoped. Theoretically, 280 operations should be necessary
to find a collision.  By using reduced-round versions of the
algorithm, and the team's technique, it was possible to attack
SHA-1 in fewer than 233 operations. U