What are the potential risks of using md5 for password hashing in PHP applications?

Using MD5 for password hashing in PHP applications is not recommended because it is considered weak and vulnerable to brute force attacks. It is better to use stronger hashing algorithms like bcrypt or Argon2 for securely storing passwords.

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