Arbit Scratchpad

PATCHED VERSION The XWeb web server for Linux systems that had been found to have some serious vulnerability. Updates has been uploaded to FRESHMEAT and my Geocities site ... http://freshmeat.net/projects/httpwebserver/ & http://in.geocities.com/shamit_bagchi - Directory traversal bug - cgi-bin access flaw - URL identification errors; have been fixed. Donato Ferrante (http://www.autistici.org/fdonato/) had pointed out the directory traversal flaw. The Merits of Open Source Development Framework come to the fore ... This is when you understand how exciting and useful the open source community is - to actually try out and find errors themselves and inform the general public - thanks Donato Ferrante for making me feel an integral part of the open source community - the vulnerability has got published in many many places that you cannot even imagine - even in US-CERT Cyber Security Bulletin SB04-091 March 31, 2004 Its only because of this that I have u...

Security Updates The XWeb web server that I had written for Linux has been found to have some serious vulnerability. Read about it here - http://www.securitytracker.com/alerts/2004/Mar/1009514.html Though not commercial grade - an under grad project which I have not modified for quite sometime, I will try to fix this up as soon as possible. (Bad coding on my side I agree - no excuses ... ;-)) The server project (and code) is available at the Freshmeat site - http://freshmeat.net/projects/httpwebserver/ Thank you Donato Ferrante for having pointed out the flaw.

CLEAN UP THE CRUFT Some revamp to the blog - was getting majorly messed up with too many images and things ... cleaned it ! I like it this way - do you ? Reading Jack- Straight from the gut - autobiography of Jack Welch, CEO of GE for past 2 decades upto 2001 ... Also simultaneously reading few other books.

'INFOVERLOAD' - Aversion or Addiction I am observing that the more the information on the Net/free CDs galore/variety of PC Magazines, the greater the aversion - being in the software industry the usage of PCs all day may be one factor for this. The IT revolution has increased the employment levels but the general health - body, legs, neck, eyes, hands and everything including mental and physical well being may get affected. Either you suffer in the long run getting obese, pain, RSI (stress injury and carpal tunelling syndrome - on fingers) and get addicted to the PC or you may start developing a phobia towards PCs. Often I find myself downloading pages after pages thinking yes this is interesting - a few more and the article will get over - let me download and then Ill view offline; but finally may not end up reading even 20% of those stored pages in the browser cache or go into such a recursive loop again the next day. Also the more the info - information o...

Two lectures on Sri Ramakrishna by Swami Vivekananda My Master (Sri Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa) ... And after a short while Sri Ramakrishna was blessed with a vision of Sita, the divine consort of Rama, who entered his body and disappeared there with the words, "I bequeath to you my smile." "This religious fervor (referring to himself) is not like rain in the rainy season, which comes in torrents and goes in torrents. It is like an image of Siva that has not been set up by human hands but is a natural one that has sprung up, as it were, from the bowels of the earth." -- Sri Ramakrishna. (Two lectures on Sri Ramakrishna delivered by Swami Vivekananda in New York and England in 1896 were combined subsequently under the present heading)