What security considerations should be taken into account when executing external commands or functions in PHP to interact with a gameserver?

When executing external commands or functions in PHP to interact with a gameserver, it is important to sanitize user input to prevent injection attacks. Additionally, it is crucial to validate and sanitize any data received from the gameserver to prevent potential security vulnerabilities. Using functions like escapeshellarg() and escapeshellcmd() can help mitigate risks associated with executing external commands.

// Sanitize user input before executing external command
$userInput = $_POST['input'];
$sanitizedInput = escapeshellarg($userInput);

// Execute external command with sanitized input
$output = shell_exec("some_command " . $sanitizedInput);

// Validate and sanitize data received from gameserver
$gameData = getDataFromGameServer();
$validatedData = validateData($gameData);