What are the best practices for securely storing and handling passwords in a PHP and MySQL login system?

One of the best practices for securely storing and handling passwords in a PHP and MySQL login system is to use password hashing with a strong hashing algorithm like bcrypt. This ensures that passwords are not stored in plain text and are securely encrypted. Additionally, it is important to use prepared statements to prevent SQL injection attacks when interacting with the MySQL database. 

// Hashing the password before storing it in the database
$password = password_hash($_POST['password'], PASSWORD_BCRYPT);

// Using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO users (username, password) VALUES (?, ?)");
$stmt->execute([$username, $password]);

Keywords

password hashing password salting bcrypt prepared statements SQL injection

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