As part of the latest Google Grope they have chosen plain text password storage as their keyphrase of choice. I was surprised by this, but I am also passionate about it from a development point-of-view. Having worked with databases such as SQL in the past I know that password storage is high on the security requirements and under no circumstances should passwords be stored in plain text format.
The SQL standard for password storage (when I was coding) was MD5. This may have changed as I am a little rusty with the ole PHP & SQL, but once again this was a security requirement to avoid compromising passwords & hacking attempts. This was of course if the password was being stored in a database at all. » Read more: Plain Text Password Storage – Why it’s bad!
