What potential pitfalls should PHP developers be aware of when working with serialized data in PHP?

When working with serialized data in PHP, developers should be aware of the potential security risks associated with unserialized user input. Attackers could inject malicious code into serialized data, leading to code execution vulnerabilities. To mitigate this risk, developers should validate and sanitize all user input before unserializing it. 

$serialized_data = $_POST['data'];

// Validate and sanitize the serialized data before unserializing
if (is_string($serialized_data)) {
    $clean_data = filter_var($serialized_data, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
    $unserialized_data = unserialize($clean_data);
    // Use the unserialized data safely
} else {
    // Handle invalid input
}

Keywords

serialization unserialize data corruption security vulnerability PHP serialization bugs

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