What are the potential pitfalls of not properly securing data entry and output in PHP scripts, as seen in the provided code snippet?

Potential pitfalls of not properly securing data entry and output in PHP scripts include vulnerability to SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, and data leakage. To mitigate these risks, it is crucial to sanitize input data, validate user input, and properly escape output data to prevent malicious code execution. 

// Example of properly securing data entry and output in PHP scripts

// Sanitize input data before using it in a query
$username = filter_var($_POST['username'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$password = filter_var($_POST['password'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Validate user input to ensure it meets required criteria
if (strlen($username) < 5 || strlen($password) < 8) {
    echo "Username must be at least 5 characters and password must be at least 8 characters.";
    exit;
}

// Escape output data before displaying it to prevent XSS attacks
echo htmlspecialchars($username);

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting (XSS) data validation prepared statements output escaping

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