This week PHP released 7.2. I just now had a chance to look under the hood. It seems PHP's security has stepped up to the plate on this version. I was surprised by the improvements & support for cryptoGraphy & password hashing algorithms.
The new PHP 7.2 uses Argon2. This is a password hashing algorithm. Argon2 is working its way up to be the standard when it comes to Bcrypt. Argon2 has been added to the core. You can use it via password_hash() function.
I noticed Mcrypt has been removed and replaced with Libsodium. I think Mcrypt was inside the core for a while, they decided to replace it with Libsodium its basically a modern cypto. The developers decided to add this to the core instead of external codes to add in to the library. Those seem to be two major changes to the new version, there are other features they added and improved I haven't looked into those features deeper.
