What are best practices for securing PHP applications against common vulnerabilities?

Issue: One common vulnerability in PHP applications is SQL injection, where attackers can manipulate SQL queries to gain unauthorized access to databases. To prevent this, developers should use parameterized queries or prepared statements to sanitize user input before executing SQL queries. Code snippet: 

// Using parameterized queries to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();
```

Issue: Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks are another common vulnerability in PHP applications, where attackers inject malicious scripts into web pages viewed by other users. To prevent this, developers should sanitize user input and encode output to prevent script execution.

Code snippet:
```php
// Sanitizing user input to prevent XSS attacks
$encodedInput = htmlspecialchars($userInput, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
echo $encodedInput;

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting input validation password hashing secure coding practices

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