With the recent story of the Zappos breach/hack (and many more throughout the year), I was wondering if there is any way to encrypt the user information (especially the password field) using another algorithm other than MD5, such as SHA-2, so in the event of a breach/hack the user information would remain "safe?"

Hi chaimk

I know there was some debate as to whether it was a Drupal or Java site that was hacked at Zappos. If it was Drupal, the problem would indeed be the same as the one you're talking about.

The good news is, Zappos (it seems so far) have been pretty honest about the leak and they say that the passwords weren't breached.

Both Joomla and Drupal do more than just encrypt the password, they also salt it. Here's a Joomla 1.5 explanation: docs.joomla.org/API15:JUserHelper/getSalt

More on this for Drupal: joncave.co.uk/2011/01/password-storage-in-drupal-and-wordpress/ It looks like Drupal may use a little SHA-2.