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Possible Duplicate:
PHP:How to send the original password to the user when he clicks forgot password which is encrypted by using md5?

I have create a login and register system in php and I want to make a forgot password link to retrieve password from the database. How I do that?

Note: the password in database in encryted using md5 hash

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dramasea
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    Pretty good compression indeed :-) – Déjà vu Jan 09 '11 at 05:55
  • @Martin - I thought it was a great question. The guy obviously learned something important about md5 encryption today. – jamesmortensen Jan 09 '11 at 06:27
  • @Martin - He may well have been working from some guide or example code which told him (rightly) that this is how you should insert user passwords into a database. In php, md5 is part of the standard library, so we're literally only talking about 5 extra characters: "md5(" and ")". That's not a great deal of extra code to have added without understanding it perfectly. – Keith Irwin Jan 09 '11 at 06:33
  • Possible duplicate: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2780198/phphow-to-send-the-original-password-to-the-user-when-he-clicks-forgot-password/2780206#2780206 – Amber Jan 09 '11 at 06:39

5 Answers5

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MD5 is a cryptographic hash, not an encryption scheme. It cannot be reversed in any direct way. It can only be brute-forced by trying possible passwords until one which matches is found. This is not recommended.

You cannot reasonably recover the password. Your forgot password link should instead reset the password.

This is intentional and good design. MD5 is used to hash the passwords so that if the password database should be hacked, the hackers will only have access to the hashes of the passwords and not the original passwords, making it difficult for them to discover your users' passwords.

However, at this point, MD5 crackers have gotten fast enough that it is not recommended for password use. In the future, scrypt or bcrypt should be used as the password hash function.

Keith Irwin
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The whole point of having a hash of a password is that it's impossible to recover the original password from the hash. That way, if someone hacks the password database and steals all the hashes, they can't recover all the user's passwords. In fact, it's mathematically impossible to do so. A hash function maps all of the infinitely many possible strings to a set of strings of fixed length, so there are (ideally!) infinitely many strings that hash to any particular hash value.

If you want to make a "forgot your password?" option, it's probably best to just reset the user's password to something random and then send an email containing the new junk password.

templatetypedef
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md5 is one way. You cannot reverse md5 encrypted strings.

Typically, what developers will do when providing a forgot password link is to reset the user's password to something random, give that to them in an email, and then force them to reset their password on next login.

Another solution would be to provide them with a random key and a "forgot password link" that can be used to allow them to reset their password.

Just in case you are considering it, I want to mention that it's not a good idea to store passwords in the database in plain text. The fact that you can't retrieve the user's password means that a hacker can't either.

jamesmortensen
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  • so how can i create forgot password application? – dramasea Jan 09 '11 at 05:52
  • I would also like to point out that when a database is hacked, the hackers grab the key as well. Next, a program is written to generate random passwords to be used against the hashes until one matches. So, the more complicated your password, the longer it will take until your account will be compromised. – Maarek Jul 15 '12 at 14:38
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While the other posters are right, i think a specific answer is being sought so here goes.

forgot password function can be implemented by using two columns related to the user id. one column is a random string, which can be of arbitrary length, and other the date time. When the user indicates that they have forgotten their password, you generate the random string and update this record with the string and the current date time. you then send an email to their registered email id with a url that has the random string. When that url is opened, you will check if the random string exists in your tables and if it has not been expired. you will check the current date time and the date time on which the string was generated, and you will have your own policy for determining what is the longest you will wait. typically 3 days is enough. if the link is expired, the forgot password will have to be started again. if the link is not expired, you will note the user id for which the string was generated and you will ask the user to enter their username and new password two times. the username has to match the userid for which the string was generated, and the two passwords be the same. you will then update the users password with the md5 hash of the new password.

the reason you dont want to generate a new password is because if the user recalls the password, they can still log in, even while their forgot password is in process.

Kinjal Dixit
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If users forget their passwords, you should not be sending them their passwords. Instead they should need to reset their passwords after verifying (perhaps by recieving an email, or some other means) that they are indeed the correct user.

SingleNegationElimination
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