Codebreakers Throw Internet Security Into Doubt

A team researchers at China’s Shandong University have broken one of the world’s most complex codes. But computer security experts say that’s cause for concern, not celebration: The code, known as SHA-1, is used to encrypt most sensitive Internet transactions.

Cracking a code as elaborate as SHA-1 takes a lot of computing power, but the researchers were able to work relatively quickly by setting up a distributed-computing project, modeled after the University of California’s SETI@Home, that put idle PCs across the globe to work.