What potential pitfalls should be considered when implementing user authentication and authorization in PHP?

One potential pitfall to consider when implementing user authentication and authorization in PHP is the risk of SQL injection attacks if user input is not properly sanitized. To mitigate this risk, use prepared statements or parameterized queries when interacting with the database to prevent malicious SQL injection attempts.

// Using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username AND password = :password");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->bindParam(':password', $password);
$stmt->execute();
$user = $stmt->fetch();