What potential security risks are present in the PHP script provided in the forum thread?

The potential security risk present in the PHP script is the use of user input directly in a SQL query without proper sanitization, which can lead to SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, it is crucial to use prepared statements with parameterized queries to prevent SQL injection vulnerabilities. 

// Original vulnerable code
$unsafe_variable = $_POST['user_input'];
$sql = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '$unsafe_variable'";
$result = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

// Fixed code using prepared statements
$safe_variable = $_POST['user_input'];
$stmt = $conn->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ?");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $safe_variable);
$stmt->execute();
$result = $stmt->get_result();

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting input validation session hijacking secure coding practices

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