What are best practices for securely handling user-specific salts in PHP server communication?

When handling user-specific salts in PHP server communication, it is important to securely store and handle these salts to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information. One best practice is to encrypt the salts before storing them in a database and decrypt them only when needed for authentication. 

// Encrypt the user-specific salt before storing it in the database
$userSalt = 'random_user_salt';
$encryptedSalt = openssl_encrypt($userSalt, 'AES-256-CBC', 'encryption_key', 0, '16_character_iv');

// Store the encrypted salt in the database
// Example: $query = "INSERT INTO users (user_salt) VALUES ('$encryptedSalt')";
// Execute the query to store the encrypted salt

// Decrypt the salt only when needed for authentication
$decryptedSalt = openssl_decrypt($encryptedSalt, 'AES-256-CBC', 'encryption_key', 0, '16_character_iv');

// Use the decrypted salt for authentication
// Example: $hashedPassword = hash('sha256', $password . $decryptedSalt);

Keywords

salts PHP security server communication user-specific

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