SHA-1 (The Secure Hash Algorithm) is a cryptographic hash function (or message digest algorithm) designed by the National Security Agency (NSA) and published by the United States Government as a Federal Information Processing Standard. It produces an 160 bit hash value from a string of a maximum of 2^64 bits. It was released in support of the Government's attempt to control the export of quality encryption. It is a part of the [Digital Signature Standard]?, also published by the US Government as a FIPS standard, which was intended to provide high quality authentication without the possibility of encryption. It turned out that encryption was possible, so the intended result was 'self-thwarted'.
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