How can PHP developers ensure that their code is not vulnerable to malicious attacks or exploits?

To ensure that PHP code is not vulnerable to malicious attacks or exploits, developers should sanitize user input, validate all data, use prepared statements for database queries to prevent SQL injection, escape output to prevent cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, and keep PHP and all libraries up to date with security patches. 

// Sanitize user input example
$username = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'username', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Prepared statement example
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();

// Escape output example
echo htmlspecialchars($output, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting input validation secure coding practices OWASP Top 10.

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