What is bcrypt?

bcrypt is a password hashing function designed by Niels Provos and David Mazières. It is based on the Blowfish cipher and includes a built-in salt and configurable cost factor (work factor), making it resistant to brute-force and rainbow table attacks. As hardware improves, the cost factor can be increased to keep hashing slow enough. bcrypt is widely recommended for storing user passwords. Unlike MD5 or SHA-256 alone, bcrypt is intentionally slow and designed for password storage.