In server-side request forgery (SSRF) attacks, an attacker can trick a server into making requests to other servers, potentially bypassing access controls and revealing sensitive information. SSRF vulnerabilities often arise when a web application makes a request to a URL provided by a user, without properly validating or sanitizing the input.
To adhere to this rule and prevent SSRF, always sanitize and validate user-provided URLs and file paths before making requests. PHP’s built-in filter_var function can be used with the FILTER_SANITIZE_URL and FILTER_VALIDATE_URL filters to ensure the URL is safe to use. If handling file paths, use realpath to resolve any relative paths or symbolic links, and then ensure the resolved path is within a safe base directory. This will prevent directory traversal attacks where an attacker can read or write files outside of the intended directory.