The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency within the Department of Commerce, announced Thursday that it's formally retiring the SHA-1 cryptographic algorithm. SHA-1, short for Secure Hash Algorithm 1, is a 27-year-old hash function used in cryptography and has since been deemed broken owing to the risk of collision attacks. While hashes are designed to be

Microsoft on Thursday flagged a cross-platform botnet that's primarily designed to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks against private Minecraft servers. Called MCCrash, the botnet is characterized by a unique spreading mechanism that allows it to propagate to Linux-based devices despite originating from malicious software downloads on Windows hosts. "The botnet spreads by