Secure Storage: Why You Must Never Store Passwords in Plain Text (and How to Use Hashing and Salting)
For web developers and database administrators, one of the most sacred rules of programming is: **never store passwords in plain text**. A database compromise should never lead to credential exposure.
Hashing vs. Encryption
These two concepts are mathematically distinct:
- Encryption: A two-way function where a cipher can be decrypted back to its original plain text. Passwords **should not** be stored using symmetric/asymmetric encryption.
- Hashing: A one-way cryptographic function. Once computed, the output (hash) cannot be reversed to discover the input. This is the industry standard.
What is a Cryptographic "Salt"?
If two users share the same password, their hashes would be identical, exposing them to **Rainbow Table** lookups.
To mitigate this, append a **Salt**—a unique, cryptographically random string generated for each user at account creation—before hashing:
Modern Recommended Algorithms
Fast hash algorithms like **MD5, SHA-1, or SHA-256** are insecure for passwords because GPUs can compute billions of them per second. Developers should use adaptive, memory-hard hashing algorithms:
- bcrypt: Time-tested and widely supported.
- Argon2: The state-of-the-art password hashing standard, resistant to GPU/ASIC cracking.
- PBKDF2: Robust and recommended by various enterprise compliance frameworks.
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