MySQL secure random string generator

I am looking to generate a cryptographically secure string for password reset in MySQL. I know I could do this at the application level in PHP; but that requires the OpenSSL extension which many of my customers might not have.

If I can do it in MySQL 5 in a secure way that is widely available that would be ideal. Is this possible?

Note: This is for generating a secure token for password reset. It doesn't have anything to do with a secure connection, so using https is not a solution.

There are many encryption methods available in mySQL.

If you need two way encryption you could use aes_encrypt which has the accompanying aes_decrypt

If if you only need a secure hash then you could use sha2

The following statement could get you a similar result to openssl_random_pseudo_bytes

SELECT HEX(SHA2(CONCAT(NOW(), RAND(), UUID()), 512));

The statement above takes NOW() and concatenates it with RAND() and a UUID(), then performs a 512 bit SHA2() encryption on the result, and then converts that to HEX()

StackExchange Database Administrators Q#119746, answer score: 4