How can the login_check function be improved to enhance the security and reliability of user authentication?

Issue: The login_check function currently only checks if the username and password match a hardcoded value, which is not secure. To enhance security and reliability, the function should query a database to validate the user credentials. 

// Improved login_check function to query a database for user authentication
function login_check($username, $password) {
    // Connect to the database
    $conn = new mysqli('localhost', 'username', 'password', 'database_name');

    // Query the database for the user with the provided username and password
    $query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '$username' AND password = '$password'";
    $result = $conn->query($query);

    // Check if a matching user was found
    if ($result->num_rows == 1) {
        return true; // User authenticated successfully
    } else {
        return false; // User authentication failed
    }

    // Close the database connection
    $conn->close();
}

Keywords

password_hash password_verify CSRF token two-factor authentication secure session management

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