What are the potential security risks of allowing the www-data user to modify system services through PHP scripts?

Allowing the www-data user to modify system services through PHP scripts can pose a significant security risk as it grants potentially malicious actors the ability to make unauthorized changes to critical system components. To mitigate this risk, it is recommended to restrict the permissions of the www-data user to prevent it from executing system commands that could impact the overall system stability and security.

// Restrict www-data user permissions to prevent modifying system services
exec('sudo chown -R root:www-data /path/to/service/directory');
exec('sudo chmod -R 750 /path/to/service/directory');