What are the implications of not properly escaping special characters in the <head> section of HTML when using PHP?

Not properly escaping special characters in the <head> section of HTML when using PHP can lead to potential security vulnerabilities such as cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. To prevent this, special characters should be properly escaped using PHP's htmlspecialchars() function before outputting any user input or dynamic content in the HTML <head> section. 

&lt;?php
$title = &quot;&lt;script&gt;alert(&#039;XSS attack!&#039;)&lt;/script&gt;&quot;;
echo &quot;&lt;head&gt;&lt;title&gt;&quot; . htmlspecialchars($title) . &quot;&lt;/title&gt;&lt;/head&gt;&quot;;
?&gt;

Keywords

HTML PHP special characters security vulnerability XSS

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