What are some potential pitfalls of using file_get_contents in PHP to include external content on a website?

Using file_get_contents in PHP to include external content on a website can pose security risks, as it allows for remote file inclusion attacks. To mitigate this risk, it is recommended to use the cURL library in PHP, which provides more control and security features when making HTTP requests to external resources. 

$url = 'https://www.example.com/data.txt';

$ch = curl_init();

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$response = curl_exec($ch);

curl_close($ch);

echo $response;

Keywords

file_get_contents external content security vulnerabilities remote file inclusion data validation

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