why do people refer to "the SHA 1"? - mmedrano9438/peripheral-brain GitHub Wiki

SHA-1 (Secure Hash Algorithm 1) is a 'hash function' which takes an input and produces a 160-[bit] (20-byte) hash value known as a 'message digest' – typically rendered as 40 'hexadecimal' digits. Government established this Secure Hash Standard in 1993. According to the NSA, this was done to correct a flaw in the original algorithm which reduced its cryptographic security, but they did not provide any further explanation.