What are some potential security risks associated with including external scripts using PHP?

Including external scripts using PHP can pose security risks such as cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, where malicious scripts can be injected into the website, and remote code execution, where attackers can execute arbitrary code on the server. To mitigate these risks, it is important to validate and sanitize any user input and carefully review and trust external scripts before including them in your code. 

// Example of validating and sanitizing user input before including external script
$user_input = $_GET['input'];
$validated_input = filter_var($user_input, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Include external script only if it is trusted
if ($validated_input === 'trusted_script') {
    include('trusted_script.php');
}

Keywords

Cross-site scripting SQL injection remote code execution file inclusion vulnerability insecure deserialization

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