Now don't go getting upset or scared or go running around yelling "The sky is falling!  The sky is falling!"  The sky isn't falling.  It's mearly taken some major damage and the engineers are saying that it needs to be replaced before it does fall.

SHA-1 computer hash code has been broken by a team in China.  A "hash" code takes a file, and encodes the document into a string of characters.  If you think about when you were a kid, if you take a message and cut out every other character, then that would be a hash of the original message.  When you read the message and compare the hash to it, if any of the characters are different, then you know you are not reading the original message.

SHA-1 is often used to encode passwords and secure communications. But don't worry, no one is going to be breaking into your grocery list or your dirty pictures anytime soon.

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