Linus Torvalds: "the point is the SHA-1, as far as Git is concerned, isn't even a security feature. It's purely a consistency check. The security parts are elsewhere, so a lot of people assume that since Git uses SHA-1 and SHA-1 is used for cryptographically secure stuff, they think that, OK, it's a huge security feature. It has nothing at all to do with security, it's just the best hash you can get."