What potential risks are associated with directly accessing variables in $_REQUEST in PHP?

Directly accessing variables in $_REQUEST in PHP can pose security risks such as injection attacks or data manipulation. To mitigate these risks, it is recommended to sanitize and validate the input data before using it in your application.

// Sanitize and validate input data from $_REQUEST before using it
$input_data = filter_input_array(INPUT_REQUEST, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Now you can safely use $input_data in your application