What are the potential pitfalls of using unserialize() in PHP to read data from a file?

The potential pitfall of using unserialize() in PHP to read data from a file is that it can lead to security vulnerabilities such as code injection attacks if the data being unserialized is not properly sanitized. To mitigate this risk, it is important to validate and sanitize the input data before passing it to unserialize(). 

// Read data from file
$data = file_get_contents('data.txt');

// Validate and sanitize input data
if (validate_data($data)) {
    $unserialized_data = unserialize($data);
    // Process unserialized data
} else {
    // Handle invalid data
}

function validate_data($data) {
    // Implement validation logic here
    return true; // Return true if data is valid, false otherwise
}

Keywords

unserialize PHP data file security

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