How to Salt Passwords in PHP

Password salting is a crucial step in enhancing the security of user passwords. In PHP, salting passwords involves adding random data to passwords before hashing them for storage. By doing so, it becomes significantly more challenging for attackers to use precomputed tables like rainbow tables to crack passwords.

To salt passwords in PHP, you can follow these steps:

1. Generate a random salt using a secure method like random_bytes() or openssl_random_pseudo_bytes().
2. Append the generated salt to the user's password.
3. Hash the salted password using a secure hashing algorithm like bcrypt.
4. Store the hashed password along with the generated salt.

By salting passwords in this manner, you can significantly improve the security of user credentials and protect against various forms of attacks.