What are the potential security risks associated with handling user input in PHP scripts?

One potential security risk associated with handling user input in PHP scripts is the possibility of SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, it is important to sanitize and validate user input before using it in database queries. This can be done by using prepared statements or escaping user input.

// Example of using prepared statements to handle user input securely
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $_POST['username']);
$stmt->execute();