MySQL 5.7 Reference Manual / Security / Access Control and Account Management
1 Account User Names and Passwords
MySQL stores accounts in the user
table of the mysql
system database. An account is defined in terms of a user name and the client host or hosts from which the user can connect to the server. For information about account representation in the user
table, see Section 6.2.3, “Grant Tables”.
An account may also have authentication credentials such as a password. The credentials are handled by the account authentication plugin. MySQL supports multiple authentication plugins. Some of them use built-in authentication methods, whereas others enable authentication using external authentication methods. See Section 6.2.13, “Pluggable Authentication”.