Malware hits Twitter

Twitter's time has finally come. The microblogging service, once the playground of the Web 2.0 digerati, is now mainstream enough to be targeted by online criminals, reports CNet News.

Kaspersky Lab has uncovered a fake Twitter profile created solely for the purpose of infecting people's computers.

The profile, with an alias that means "pretty rabbit" in Portuguese, has posted a link that purports to be a pornographic video, but is instead Trojan software masquerading as MP3 files that steals data from the machine, according to the Kaspersky's Viruslist.com blog.

In a major shift in its security strategy, Microsoft plans to give security software makers an early look at technical details of security vulnerabilities, before it releases updates on Patch Tuesday each month, says ChannelWeb.

Microsoft announced the initiative, called the Microsoft Active Protections Programme (MAPP), on Tuesday, at the Black Hat security conference, in Las Vegas.

In a Tuesday post to the newly established Microsoft Security Response Centre blog, MSRC senior program manager Steve Adegbite explained that the goal of MAPP is to give security vendors more breathing room to produce signatures.

A day after its launch, Google's Street View has already uncovered a lying neighbour, sprung a cheating spouse and snapped a man sleeping on the job, as armchair explorers pick apart the invasive new mapping tool, reports The Sydney Morning Herald.

While Google had vowed to instruct its camera-equipped cars not to drive down private roads and to blur faces and number plates, those promises were inadvertently broken.

Various unblurred images of faces and number plates have been removed from Street View following complaints from users.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs conceded in an e-mail to Apple employees that the company made numerous mistakes during the launch of its MobileMe Internet service, saying the service "was simply not up to Apple's standards" and that it "clearly needed more time and testing".

According to Macworld, the memo also indicates that Jobs has now transferred responsibility for the service to a different Apple executive.

The memo, first reported by Ars Technica and also obtained by Macworld, says the MobileMe team will now report to Eddy Cue, who has led the iTunes team for the past several years.