What are the potential risks of displaying sensitive information using PHP variables on a webpage?

Displaying sensitive information using PHP variables on a webpage can lead to security risks such as exposing confidential data to unauthorized users or potential attackers. To mitigate this risk, it is essential to properly sanitize and validate user input before displaying it on the webpage. This can be achieved by using PHP functions like htmlspecialchars() to escape special characters and prevent Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. 

<?php
// Sanitize and validate sensitive information before displaying
$sensitiveData = "Confidential information";
echo htmlspecialchars($sensitiveData);
?>

Keywords

security risks PHP variables sensitive information webpage data leakage

Related Questions