What potential security risks are associated with allowing users to manipulate XML data in PHP applications?

Allowing users to manipulate XML data in PHP applications can pose security risks such as XML injection attacks, where malicious users can inject harmful code into the XML data to exploit vulnerabilities in the application. To mitigate this risk, it is important to properly sanitize and validate user input before processing it as XML data in PHP. 

// Sanitize and validate user input before processing as XML data
$userInput = $_POST['xml_data'];

// Validate XML input
libxml_use_internal_errors(true);
$xml = simplexml_load_string($userInput);

if ($xml === false) {
    // Handle invalid XML input
    echo "Invalid XML input";
} else {
    // Process the XML data
    // Code to handle valid XML input
}

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