What are the potential risks or consequences of altering HTTP headers in PHP scripts?

Altering HTTP headers in PHP scripts can lead to security vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks or information disclosure. It is important to sanitize and validate user input before setting HTTP headers to prevent malicious exploitation. To mitigate these risks, always use proper input validation and escape functions when working with HTTP headers in PHP.

// Sanitize and validate user input before setting HTTP headers
$userInput = $_POST['input'];
$validatedInput = filter_var($userInput, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Set HTTP header with the sanitized input
header("X-Input: " . $validatedInput);