What are the potential pitfalls of placing the "target="_blank"" attribute inside a PHP string variable?

Placing the "target="_blank"" attribute inside a PHP string variable can lead to potential security vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. To mitigate this risk, it is recommended to use htmlspecialchars() function to escape the attribute value before outputting it in the HTML. 

<?php
$target = '_blank';
echo '<a href="https://example.com" target="' . htmlspecialchars($target) . '">Link</a>';
?>

Keywords

target="_blank" PHP string variable security vulnerability cross-site scripting

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