Hey Nihil & Akshayakrsh & everyone else who can help

I don't know if this clarifies what you were asking about, but Yes, live in the USA and I am trying to access http://www.altavista.com

No my homepage is not hijacked.
Yes I can access Google. But I want to use the AltaVista Search engine.

This is what Norton Symantec says about altavista traversal
AltaVista Traversal
The AltaVista search engine includes a CGI that accepts "../" in standard queries. This allows an attacker to access sensitive files in the HTTP directory which is one level above the search engine. Sensitive files in this directory include the trivially encrypted password for the remote administration utility. The CGI in question also processes additional "../" strings if they are encoded in Hex (%2e%2e%2f). This would allow an attacker to access files throughout the host system. This signature detects an attempt to exploit this vulnerability.
http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=2000-0039

This is the remedy posted by http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/896/solution/ as well as other sites.
AltaVista has released a patch for this issue, available at:

http://doc.altavista.com/business_so...intranet.shtml

It is under the 'patches' heading, and is called:
AltaVista Search Intranet V2.3A Security Patch 12/99