Ask HN:Benefits Of Storing Passwords In Plain Text?
cperciva: Are there any major benefits to storing a password in plain text (from a development standpoint)?Not unless you want to use your users' passwords to impersonate them on other sites... or to allow anyone who breaks into your servers to do the same.Don't use MD5 either -- that's far too weak.  Use a real key derivation function: Ideally scrypt, but failing that, bcrypt or PBKDF2.