What are the potential pitfalls of directly accessing PHP files in a website and how can this be prevented for better security measures?

Directly accessing PHP files in a website can expose sensitive information, such as database credentials or other critical data. To prevent this, you can use a .htaccess file to restrict direct access to PHP files by denying access from external sources. 

# Prevent direct access to PHP files
<Files *.php>
    Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
</Files>

Keywords

Direct file access security vulnerabilities file permissions input validation .htaccess restrictions

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