These are all good points and I agree with you completely. I think I haven't explained myself well. Firstly I made the mistake of saying "plaintext" when what

These are all good points and I agree with you completely. I think I haven't explained myself well. Firstly I made the mistake of saying "plaintext" when what I really meant was "recoverable", ie encrypted but not hashed. I would never suggest that passwords be stored in plaintext, protected only by operating system and DB passwords. I didn't make that clear and I think I've deservedly gotten some heat for it. All I am trying to say is that with enough effort, data can be secure, or secure enough. In my job I store customers' credit card information. This must be in a recoverable form. If it leaks I am dead and probably so is the company. Nothing is perfect but I have gone to a lot of trouble and I have reasonable confidence in my efforts. Same goes for server private keys, financial records, etc. All of it is "ring 0" secure data and extraordinary efforts are made to keep it that way. I do not actually store user passwords currently, but I know people who do. I have similar confidence in their precautions and skill. Obviously it can be done badly, just like hashed passwords can be implemented badly. But if done properly, I stand by my assertions that storing user passwords in a recoverable format can be no greater a risk than any other part of the system, and no easier or more likely an attack. I have harped on about this enough, but I'd just like to point out two more things - one, if people enter the same login details to a honeypot then nothing can save them, and two, that crooked employees can circumvent the hashing anyway, either by sniffing inside SSL or just inserting a logging hook. Relying on hashes to thwart crooked employees is folly and could breed complacency. Hashing passwords is a security layer, nothing less and nothing more. A site's security relies on the skill and care of its architect and staff, not on any single hot topic buzzword. Right, that's enough on this topic. Thanks for the thoughtful reply.