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The specific syntax of Lisp dialects allows one to precisely define and distinguish basic constructs, add new syntactic elements, and transform program forms as data during macro expansion. This stems from the use of simple yet well-thought-out ways of organizing and representing source code.

Clojure is a general-purpose functional programming language based on the Lisp-1 model. Its reference implementation runs on the JVM, but there are also editions that work in other environments – for example, the popular ClojureScript, which compiles to JavaScript. Clojure is a Lisp created with concurrent processing and the Java ecosystem in mind.

At the turn of September and October 2014 the world learned of a security vulnerability that had been lurking for years in the GNU Bourne Again Shell (a.k.a. Bash). Most IT-security outlets had already covered the topic and published appropriate remediation methods, yet what caught my attention was the educational aspect of the flaw – in that regard it is a “good bug”, that is, one that can be used to explain many interesting mechanisms present in Unix-like systems.

When typing a website name into the browser’s address bar, mistakes sometimes happen. Instead of visiting the right site, we end up on a so-called domain parking page, or in a completely different service. There are also less safe situations—sites deceptively similar to the originals, used to siphon data or infect a computer with malware. Let’s imagine that a similar situation could occur even when the entered address was correct…

Attacks that rely on setting up fake update servers are not as difficult to carry out as one might think. The main reasons are administrators’ carelessness and the absence of robust version-publishing processes, although occasionally we see astonishing attack vectors that are hard to anticipate.