What are the potential security risks of including files with user input in PHP?

When including files with user input in PHP, there is a risk of directory traversal attacks or remote file inclusion vulnerabilities. To mitigate these risks, it is important to validate and sanitize user input before including any files. This can be done by checking if the input is a valid file path and restricting access to certain directories. 

$user_input = $_GET['file'];

// Validate user input to prevent directory traversal
$allowed_files = ['file1.php', 'file2.php', 'file3.php'];
if (in_array($user_input, $allowed_files)) {
    include($user_input);
} else {
    echo "Invalid file input";
}

Keywords

file inclusion user input security risks PHP vulnerabilities

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