What are the potential security risks associated with using file_get_contents to retrieve data from external websites?

Using file_get_contents to retrieve data from external websites can pose security risks such as allowing remote code execution, exposing sensitive information, and potential for malicious content injection. To mitigate these risks, it is recommended to use more secure methods like cURL with proper validation and sanitization of the input data. 

$url = 'https://www.example.com/data.json';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

// Process the retrieved data

Keywords

file_get_contents security risks external websites data retrieval PHP

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