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Matt's Script Archive

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Matt's Script Archive is a collection of CGI scripts written in Perl. Started in 1995 by Matt Wright (at the time a high school student in Fort Collins, Colorado), the archive contains about a dozen free scripts, designed to be easily added to a site and configured.[1] One of the scripts, FormMail, is claimed to be the most popular CGI script on the World Wide Web,[citation needed] with over 2 million downloads since 1997.[2]

As the scripts grew in popularity they were criticized for being insecure. The FormMail.pl script, in particular, was exploited by spammers to send junk email.[3] SecurityFocus put attacks based on FormMail.pl third in their list of the Top Attacks for the 1st Quarter of 2002.[4] As Perl 5 became more mature, norms in the community changed to encourage use of modules such as CGI.pm and code safety features such as strictures and taint checking; the scripts in Matt's Script Archive, however, did not follow these changes, and as a result (and also because Matt Wright wrote much of the code when he was a less-experienced programmer) tend to be buggy. Experienced Perl programmers usually recommend against the use of these scripts, and the London Perl Mongers started an effort called nms to write drop-in replacements for them. Matt Wright himself has recommended using the nms scripts, saying:

I would highly recommend downloading the nms versions if you wish to learn CGI programming. The code you find at Matt's Script Archive is not representative of how even I would code these days.[5]

Most of the scripts at Matt's Script Archive ceased to be updated after 1996, with the exception of major security flaws or bugs.

See also

References

  1. ^ "World Wide Mart: History". Retrieved April 23, 2011.
  2. ^ "Matt's Script Archive: FormMail". Retrieved April 23, 2011.
  3. ^ "Are Spammers and Hackers Abusing Your FormMail.pl Perl Script". webgear.datacreek.net. Retrieved April 23, 2011.
  4. ^ "The nms Project". 2004-12-28. Retrieved April 23, 2011.
  5. ^ "Matt's Script Archive: nms". Retrieved April 23, 2011.
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