What are the potential risks of including files from external servers in PHP?

Including files from external servers in PHP can pose security risks such as remote code execution, exposing sensitive data, and potential malware injection. To mitigate these risks, it is recommended to avoid including files from external servers whenever possible. If it is necessary to include files from external servers, ensure that the server is trusted and the files are validated before inclusion. 

// Example of including a file from an external server securely
$external_url = 'https://example.com/external_file.php';

// Validate the URL before including
if (filter_var($external_url, FILTER_VALIDATE_URL)) {
    include($external_url);
} else {
    // Handle invalid URL
    echo "Invalid URL";
}

Keywords

security risks remote file inclusion PHP include function code injection vulnerability

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