A widely-used cryptography algorithm, known as SHA-1, has been broken by three Chinese researchers in last month, reported the Washington Times of the US.

The new technique developed by Chinese researchers is capable of capturing the security systems that adopt SHA-1, and gains admittance to important governmental departments like the Pentagon and intelligence agencies.

Three researchers, i.e., Wang Xiaoyun, Yu Hongbo and Yiqun Lisa Yin form the Shandong University of China said in their article that a new code breaking technique has been developed. However, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, the developer of SHA-1 said in an announcement that it cannot say whether the new technique effective or not, but they say the Chinese researchers are prominent codebreakers.

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the US government will drop SHA-1 in the next five years in order to adopt more advanced technology. It plans to adopt SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384 and SHA-512 in 2010. The SHA-1 was adopted by the US government in 1994 and is widely used in security applications in the US government.