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SHA-1 and MD5 are two different encryption algorithms.
SHA-1 is a two way algorithm meaning that you can take the encrypted value, and decrypt the value to get the original plain text value back. This algorithm provides a good level of security for data, and is a standard algorithm which is used to protect credit card data when it is stored within a database.
MD5 is a one way hashing algorithm meaning that you can not take the hashed (or encrypted value) and decrypt it to get the original plain text value back. This provides an excellent level of security for things like passwords where you do not need the original value. To use an MD5 value you hash the value you want to check to see is encrypted and compare it to the stored hashed values for a match.
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Labnuke99 | Feb 14 2008 8:17PM GMT
Both are message authentication hash algorithms. This means that they are one-way and you cannot derive the original message from the hash produced by the algorithm.
SHA1 - The US Secure Hash Algorithm takes a message of less than 264 bits in length and produces a 160-bit message digest designed so that it is computationally very expensive to find a text string that matches a given hash.
MD5 - Message Digest 5 is a standard algorithm that takes as input a message of arbitrary length and produces as output a 128-bit fingerprint or message digest of the input. Any modifications made to the message in transit can then be detected by recalculating the digest. Similar in concept to a CRC, the MD5 algorithm is used as part of the SNMPv3 security subsystem
Please also see:
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAC-SHA1" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMAC-SHA1</a>
