What are the potential security risks of using shell_exec in PHP to execute commands on a server?

Using shell_exec in PHP to execute commands on a server can pose security risks such as command injection attacks, where an attacker can manipulate the input to execute arbitrary commands on the server. To mitigate this risk, it is recommended to sanitize and validate the input before passing it to shell_exec. 

// Sanitize and validate the input before passing it to shell_exec
$input = $_POST['input']; // Assuming input is coming from a form
$validated_input = escapeshellarg($input); // Sanitize input using escapeshellarg
$output = shell_exec("your_command_here $validated_input");
echo $output;

Keywords

shell_exec PHP security risks server commands

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