What are the potential pitfalls of using sessions to pass variables in PHP?

Using sessions to pass variables in PHP can lead to potential security risks such as session hijacking or session fixation attacks. To mitigate these risks, it is important to properly sanitize and validate any data being stored in sessions, as well as regenerate the session ID after a user logs in or performs any sensitive actions. 

// Start the session
session_start();

// Store a variable in the session after sanitizing and validating it
$_SESSION['user_id'] = filter_var($_POST['user_id'], FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_INT);

// Regenerate the session ID
session_regenerate_id(true);

Keywords

session variables security data loss cookies

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