Adding new users in Spring Security

I have basic spring security set up in my Spring / Java EE web app. I can restrict access to certain pages and force login (with roles etc.). There needs to be a form where new users can register and specify a login name and password.

I am wondering if, to create new users, I simply query and update the appropriate spring security tables (e.g. using hibernate) as I would for any query, or is there built in functionality to create new users? If I am simply to use a standard DAO to update the users, how should I handle hashing of passwords?

Thanks!