I'm going to implements password recovery in my authentication. I haven't put this together in a while and wondering if there is anything I ought to be aware of.
My idea at the moment is:
- User clicks "Forgot my password" to go the password recover page: a form with an email field
- They enter their email, and an email is sent to that address with a link and password recover token/key (MD5 string - it just needs to be somewhat random and long right?). An entry is also made in the password_recovery database table which ties that token to their account, and an expire date (1 hour?)
- They retrieve the email and click the link to take them to a password set page: two fields to enter their password, and confirm their password again.
- Done, please login again with new password
Does that seem OK? Anything changed over the years where this approach is no longer recommended?
UPDATE
Additions that I opted for:
- I store the token in the database hashed. If a hacker we to be able to access the database table somehow, they wouldn't be able to use the stored tokens .. hopefully (hashed with sha256)
md5(time() . $ip_address)
in particular, would be pretty easy to guess. Don't do that.