A family of cryptographic hash functions developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). SHA transforms input data of any length into a fixed-length hash value (or digest), which is unique to the original data. Even a small change in the input produces a drastically different hash, a property known as the avalanche effect.
The SHA family includes multiple versions, each offering different levels of security and performance:
- SHA-1: Produces a 160-bit hash. Once widely used but now considered insecure due to collision vulnerabilities.
- SHA-2: A family of stronger hash functions including SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, and SHA-512, offering various digest lengths and security levels.
- SHA-3: Based on the Keccak algorithm, it provides similar digest lengths to SHA-2 but with a different underlying design for improved resistance to certain attack methods.
SHA functions are widely used for data integrity verification, password storage, digital signatures, and cryptographic key generation. While SHA-1 is largely deprecated, SHA-2 remains a cornerstone of modern cryptography, and SHA-3 offers a newer alternative for high-security environments.
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