PHP 5.5 To Include Simple And Secure Password Hashing API

Few days ago, we saw the release of PHP 5.5.0 Alpha 1 to the public. The PHP development team is serious about addressing all the criticism it gets time and again. With the recent leaks of several high profile sites, a simple to use yet secure password hashing API has been introduced now.

Here's the RFC for simple password hashing API proposed by ircmaxell and now it has been implemented as a PHP core in 5.5.0 Alpha 1 release and will continue to be part of the PHP core in future releases.

In case you would like to use the API functions in older releases, there's a compatible PHP library for PHP >= 5.3.7. The reason for this is that PHP prior to 5.3.7 contains a security issue with its BCRYPT implementation.



Basically the idea behind simple password hashing API is that most of the PHP developers either don't understand or don't think worth the effort the whole concept of strong password hashing. By providing a simple API that can be called, which takes care of all of those issues for you, hopefully more projects and developers will be able to use secure password hashing.

Using the API is quite simple. All you have to do to get the hash is:

$hash = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_BCRYPT);

Verifying the password is also quite simple.

if (password_verify($password, $hash)) {
    // pass is correct :)
} else {
    // pass is correct :/
}

The simple password hashing API provides sets of password_* functions for the developers to make use of strong password hashing.

Reading materials

RFC for simple password hashing API

Designing an API

PHP 5.5.0 Alpha 1 released


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