What are the best practices for handling network scans and IP addresses in PHP scripts?

When handling network scans and IP addresses in PHP scripts, it is important to validate and sanitize user input to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. Additionally, it is recommended to use built-in PHP functions like filter_var() with the FILTER_VALIDATE_IP flag to validate IP addresses.

// Validate and sanitize user input for IP address
$ip = filter_var($_POST['ip'], FILTER_VALIDATE_IP);

if($ip){
    // IP address is valid, proceed with the script
    echo "Valid IP address: " . $ip;
} else {
    // Invalid IP address, handle error accordingly
    echo "Invalid IP address";
}