What are the potential pitfalls of directly accessing $_POST variables in PHP scripts?

Directly accessing $_POST variables in PHP scripts can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. To mitigate these risks, it is recommended to sanitize and validate user input before using it in your application. 

// Sanitize and validate user input from $_POST before using it in the application
$username = isset($_POST['username']) ? filter_var($_POST['username'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING) : '';
$email = isset($_POST['email']) ? filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) : '';

Keywords

security vulnerability SQL injection cross-site scripting data validation sanitization

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