What are the advantages and disadvantages of using MD5 hashing for user authentication in PHP applications?

Using MD5 hashing for user authentication in PHP applications has the advantage of being fast and easy to implement. However, MD5 is considered to be a weak hashing algorithm and can be susceptible to brute force attacks. It is recommended to use stronger hashing algorithms like bcrypt or Argon2 for better security.

// Example of using bcrypt for hashing passwords in PHP
$password = "password123";
$hashed_password = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_BCRYPT);