What are the potential pitfalls of URL manipulation and rewriting in PHP?

URL manipulation and rewriting in PHP can introduce security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and path traversal attacks if not properly sanitized and validated. To mitigate these risks, always validate and sanitize user input before using it in URLs, and use functions like `filter_var()` or `htmlspecialchars()` to prevent injection attacks. 

$user_input = $_GET['user_input'];

// Validate and sanitize user input
$user_input = filter_var($user_input, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Use the sanitized input in the URL
echo '<a href="http://example.com/?param=' . htmlspecialchars($user_input) . '">Link</a>';

Keywords

URL manipulation URL rewriting security vulnerabilities PHP functions input validation

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