What are the potential security risks associated with including external PHP scripts?

Including external PHP scripts can pose security risks such as code injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and remote code execution. To mitigate these risks, it is important to validate and sanitize input data, use secure coding practices, and only include scripts from trusted sources.

// Example of including an external PHP script securely
$allowed_scripts = ['script1.php', 'script2.php']; // List of allowed scripts

if (in_array($_GET['script'], $allowed_scripts)) {
    include($_GET['script']);
} else {
    echo "Invalid script";
}