WordPress still uses MD5 for hashing passwords

This is actually incorrect.

It's using Phpass by Solar Designer, which is not the same thing as merely "using MD5". Typically, I reserve that choice of words for constructions like this:

    $hash = md5($password);
    $hash = md5($password . $salt);
    // etc

This MD5 code is still bad. They really should migrate to just using password_hash() and password_verify(), but they won't. They're committed to supporting PHP 5.2.x forever (or at least until every shared host in existence stops supporting 5.2, which is effectively forever).

https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/6edbcc88ff5ba0ac...

Note that, on newer versions of PHP, bcrypt will be used instead of the method linked by this HN submission.

We wrote a plugin for this a while ago that uses crypt(3) with 5000 rounds SHA-256 and a 96 bit salt – it's the safest method I found that fit within Wordpress' password hash column without altering it, even if I'd have preferred scrypt (argon2 wasn't out yet).

I guess we should open source it after all.

I'm shocked! WordPress, the security pioneer under all the PHP based apps, uses MD5 ...

Please do not judge all PHP apps based on this.. there are plenty of PHP apps that use better methods :(

Passwords crack at a rate of 5000/second on my 3 year old, super bad GPU laptop :-/