What are the potential security risks associated with not escaping characters in PHP database queries?

Not escaping characters in PHP database queries can lead to SQL injection attacks, where malicious users can manipulate the query to execute unauthorized commands on the database. To prevent this, it is essential to escape special characters before including them in the query using functions like mysqli_real_escape_string() or prepared statements. 

// Using mysqli_real_escape_string() to escape characters in a MySQL query
$conn = mysqli_connect("localhost", "username", "password", "database");

// Assume $userInput contains user input data
$userInput = "John Doe";
$escapedInput = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $userInput);

$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE name='$escapedInput'";
$result = mysqli_query($conn, $query);

// Process the query result

Keywords

SQL injection PHP database queries Escaping characters Security risks Vulnerabilities

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