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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-13T13:59:58+00:00

I’ve got a chunk of code that validates a user’s username and password, which

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I’ve got a chunk of code that validates a user’s username and password, which goes something like this:

$sql = "SELECT * 
FROM user 
WHERE 
    username='{$_POST['username']}' AND 
    password=MD5('{SALT}{$_POST['password']}')";

Is this any more/less secure than doing it like this?

$sql = "SELECT * 
FROM user 
WHERE 
    username='{$_POST['username']}' AND 
    password='".md5(SALT.$_POST['password'])."'";

Regardless of where/if escaping is done, is the first method vulnerable to sql injection attacks? Would the answer be the same for other database engines besides MySQL?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Speaking about injection, both ways are secure, if you properly escape variables.

    The first case will be more vulnerable, if you use complete query logging, and so the password will appear as plain text.

    Besides, if your system is affected by some virus that works as proxy between your script and database, it’ll be able to catch your password.

    One last problem that you may encounter (quite rarely, in fact), is when the system is inflicted with a virus, that reads sensible data from memory.

    I hope this makes sense.

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