What potential security risks should be considered when handling user input in PHP scripts?

One potential security risk when handling user input in PHP scripts is the possibility of SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, it is important to sanitize and validate user input before using it in database queries. This can be done by using prepared statements with parameterized queries. 

// Sanitize and validate user input to prevent SQL injection
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];

// Prepare a SQL statement using a prepared statement with parameterized queries
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $user_input);
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting (XSS) input validation htmlspecialchars prepared statements

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