implement whitelist of characters for langId $country = str_replace( array('..', "\x00"), '', $_GET['langId'] ); $languageDir = realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../application/language'); header('Content-Type: image/gif'); define('DS', DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR); $image = $languageDir . DS . $country . DS . 'flag.gif'; readfile(realpath($image));