Matt's Script Archive

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.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• History of the World Wide Web

References

1. ^ "World Wide Mart: History". https://worldwidemart.com/history.html. Retrieved April 23, 2011. 
2. ^ "Matt's Script Archive: FormMail". http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html. Retrieved April 23, 2011. 
3. ^ "Are Spammers and Hackers Abusing Your FormMail.pl Perl Script". webgear.datacreek.net. http://datacreek.net/webgear/tips/fmailspam.html. Retrieved April 23, 2011. 
4. ^ "The nms Project". 2004-12-28. http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/news.html. Retrieved April 23, 2011. 
5. ^ "Matt's Script Archive: nms". http://www.scriptarchive.com/nms.html. Retrieved April 23, 2011. 

External links

• Matt's Script Archive
• nms project on sourceforge