What potential security risks are associated with not properly validating and sanitizing user input in PHP scripts?

Not properly validating and sanitizing user input in PHP scripts can lead to security risks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other types of attacks where malicious code can be injected into the application. To mitigate these risks, it is essential to validate and sanitize all user input before using it in database queries or displaying it on web pages. 

// Validate and sanitize user input before using it in SQL queries
$userInput = $_POST['user_input'];
$cleanInput = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $userInput);

// Validate and sanitize user input before displaying it on a web page
$userInput = $_POST['user_input'];
$cleanInput = htmlspecialchars($userInput);

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting (XSS) input validation data sanitization security vulnerabilities

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