How can individual salts and multiple hashing iterations improve the security of password storage in PHP?

Storing passwords securely is crucial to protect user data. By using individual salts for each password and performing multiple hashing iterations, we can significantly enhance the security of password storage in PHP. Salting passwords adds a unique value to each password before hashing, making it harder for attackers to crack multiple passwords at once. Additionally, multiple hashing iterations increase the computational effort required to crack passwords, further strengthening the security. 

// Generate a random salt for each password
$salt = bin2hex(random_bytes(16));

// Hash the password with the salt using multiple iterations
$hashed_password = hash('sha256', $salt . $password);
for ($i = 0; $i < 10000; $i++) {
    $hashed_password = hash('sha256', $hashed_password);
}

// Store the hashed password and salt in the database
// $hashed_password and $salt

Keywords

salts hashing iterations password storage security PHP

Related Questions