bcrypt and Laravel: 72 Bytes, Not 72 Characters (opens in new tab)

I expected bcrypt to silently drop characters past 72. I did not expect it to bake in half an emoji. That's what happens with a specific password combination I tested. The original password still works. But strip the emoji (a password manager, a different keyboard, a Unicode normalizer) and you're locked out. Your Laravel validator passed it as valid the whole time. The 72-Byte Rule bcrypt has a hard input limit of 72 bytes. Not characters - bytes. When you call password_hash($password, PASSW...