What are the potential risks of continuing to use the mysql_ extension in PHP?

Continuing to use the mysql_ extension in PHP poses security risks as it is deprecated and no longer maintained, leaving your application vulnerable to potential security vulnerabilities. To mitigate this risk, it is recommended to switch to either the mysqli or PDO extension for database connections in PHP.

// Using mysqli extension to connect to MySQL database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "database";

// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}
echo "Connected successfully";