It is not safe to store passwords in plaintext in your database. Instead, you should store a hash of the password. A hash is a one-way function that takes in data (in this case, the password) and generates a fixed-length output, which is typically a string of characters. When a user attempts to log in, you hash the entered password and compare it to the stored hash. If they match, the entered password is correct.

It's important to use a secure hashing algorithm such as bcrypt, scrypt, or Argon2. These algorithms are specifically designed for password hashing and are intentionally slow to make it difficult for attackers to brute force large numbers of hashes. It's also a good practice to add a unique salt to each password before hashing it, to make it even more difficult for attackers to use precomputed tables of hashes to attack your database.

Certainly! Here's an example implementation of password hashing and verification in JavaScript using the bcrypt library:

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const bcrypt = require('bcrypt');

const hashPassword = async (plainTextPassword) => {
  const saltRounds = 10;
  const hashedPassword = await bcrypt.hash(plainTextPassword, saltRounds);
  return hashedPassword;
};

const comparePasswords = async (plainTextPassword, hashedPassword) => {
  const isMatch = await bcrypt.compare(plainTextPassword, hashedPassword);
  return isMatch;
};

In this example, hashPassword takes a plaintext password as input, generates a salt using saltRounds, and returns the hashed password. comparePasswords takes a plaintext password and a hashed password as input, and returns a boolean indicating whether the plaintext password matches the hashed password.

You would store the output of hashPassword in your database, and use comparePasswords to verify a user's entered password during the login process.