Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 28
By Huseyn Veliyev - Trend:
Azerbaijan’s National E-Signature Certification Center has postponed transition from the outdated SHA-1 cryptographic hash algorithm to SHA-2, a source in the country’s IT market told Trend.
The transition to the new algorithm, which was earlier scheduled for the end of the year, is delayed due to incompleteness of technical work in this direction.
According to the source, the transition may will be implemented next year.
The SHA-1 algorithm was developed in 1995. Its weak points were first discovered in 2005, and calculations carried out after 2010 showed that the possibilities for hacking SHA-1 are quite substantial. In this regard, Microsoft announced complete refusal to support certificates based on SHA-1. This is while the public key infrastructure in Azerbaijan is based on Microsoft solutions.
Unlike SHA-1, SHA-2 is more secure and the TLS, SSH and PGP secure data transmission protocols are based on SHA-2. In addition, thanks to the SHA-2 algorithm, mining of Bitcoin and many other altcoins is carried out.
---
Follow the author on Twitter: @h_veliyev