What are the potential security risks associated with using cookies for user authentication in PHP?

Using cookies for user authentication in PHP can pose security risks such as cookie theft, session hijacking, and cross-site scripting attacks. To mitigate these risks, it is important to properly secure the cookies by encrypting sensitive information, setting secure and HttpOnly flags, and validating the cookie data before using it for authentication.

// Set a secure and HttpOnly cookie for user authentication
setcookie("auth_token", $token, time() + 3600, '/', 'example.com', true, true);