What potential issue is the user facing with the PHP code for the auction platform?

The potential issue the user is facing with the PHP code for the auction platform is that the code is vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, the user should use prepared statements or parameterized queries to sanitize input data before executing SQL queries.

// Original vulnerable code
$username = $_POST['username'];
$password = $_POST['password'];

$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username='$username' AND password='$password'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Fixed code using prepared statements
$username = $_POST['username'];
$password = $_POST['password'];

$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username=? AND password=?";
$stmt = mysqli_prepare($connection, $query);
mysqli_stmt_bind_param($stmt, "ss", $username, $password);
mysqli_stmt_execute($stmt);
$result = mysqli_stmt_get_result($stmt);