What are some potential security risks associated with allowing users to specify download paths in PHP?

Allowing users to specify download paths in PHP can lead to security risks such as directory traversal attacks, where users can navigate to sensitive system files and potentially execute malicious code. To mitigate this risk, it is important to sanitize and validate user input to ensure that the specified download path is within a safe directory. 

// Sanitize and validate user input for download path
$download_path = '/safe/directory/' . basename($_POST['download_path']);

// Check if the download path is within the safe directory
if (strpos($download_path, '/safe/directory/') !== false) {
    // Proceed with downloading the file
    // Example: download file using $download_path
} else {
    // Return an error message or handle the request accordingly
    echo 'Invalid download path specified.';
}

Keywords

File inclusion vulnerability path traversal attack open_basedir restriction realpath() function input validation

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