What potential security risk is mentioned in relation to the PHP script's current implementation?

The potential security risk mentioned in relation to the PHP script's current implementation is the use of user input directly in SQL queries, making it vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To mitigate this risk, we should use prepared statements with parameterized queries to sanitize user input and prevent SQL injection attacks. 

// 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);

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting input validation data sanitization prepared statements

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