What are the differences between hashing and encrypting passwords in PHP user authentication systems?

When storing passwords in a PHP user authentication system, it is important to hash the passwords rather than encrypt them. Hashing is a one-way process that converts the password into a fixed-length string of characters, making it impossible to reverse engineer the original password. Encrypting, on the other hand, is a two-way process where the original password can be decrypted back to its original form, posing a security risk if the encryption key is compromised. 

// Hashing the password using password_hash() function
$password = "user_password";
$hashedPassword = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_DEFAULT);

// Verifying the hashed password using password_verify() function
if (password_verify($password, $hashedPassword)) {
    echo "Password is correct!";
} else {
    echo "Password is incorrect!";
}

Keywords

hashing encrypting passwords PHP user authentication

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