What are the potential security risks of not properly validating user input in PHP scripts?

Not properly validating user input in PHP scripts can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other types of attacks. To mitigate these risks, it is essential to validate and sanitize all user input before using it in your PHP scripts.

// Example of validating user input in PHP
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];

// Validate and sanitize the user input
$validated_input = filter_var($user_input, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Now you can safely use $validated_input in your PHP script