PHPit.net is back today with another new tutorial - this time it concerns the safe handling of passwords in your PHP scripts.

If you're ever going to create a script that involves users or passwords, which is very likely, you'll probably run across security issues with handling the passwords. You can't just store the passwords in clear text in your database, and great care must be used when managing the passwords (for example during login).

In this article I will show you everything that you have to think about when handling passwords in PHP, and how to solve some common problems.

They offer suggestions like storying them hashed (md5 or sha1), protecting them with a salt, SSL certificates, and how to manage their use with things like cookies and sessions.