What potential security risks are involved in using PHP to handle IP addresses and passwords in a script like the one described in the forum thread?

Using PHP to handle IP addresses and passwords in a script can pose security risks such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and data leakage if not handled properly. To mitigate these risks, it is important to sanitize and validate user input, use prepared statements for database queries, and store passwords securely hashed.

// Example of securely hashing passwords using PHP's password_hash function
$password = "password123";
$hashed_password = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_DEFAULT);

// Storing hashed password in the database
// Example of prepared statement to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO users (username, password) VALUES (:username, :password)");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->bindParam(':password', $hashed_password);
$stmt->execute();