Midwest PHP 2018 Notes: Cryptography for Beginners by Adam Englander (@adam_englander)

Adam gave an overview of Cryptography and how to use some of it in PHP.

Main Take Aways

I should be using password_needs_rehash(). To be honest with you this was one of those sessions where I realized I made a mistake part way through it because I already knew most of the information. I did realize that I misunderstood when password_needs_rehash() should be used (it should be used on every login to see if the password needs to be rehashed).

Things I’m Going to Do

Fix my usage of password_needs_rehash().

My Raw Notes

Cryptography: the practice and study of techniques for secure communications in the presence of third party adversaries

• Secrets are the keys to cryptography
• Used to convert plaintext to ciphertext (encrypted text)
• public key vs private key data
• All PHP developers should use password extension!!!
  • password_hash — Creates a password hash
  • password_needs_rehash — Checks if the given hash matches the given options
  • password_verify - Verifies that a password matches a hash
• libsodium should be used in PHP 7