Hackers have used a security flaw in Microsoft’s Windows operating system to infect computers with the the Duqu virus, Microsoft has admitted.

“We are working diligently to address this issue and will release a security update for customers,” Microsoft said in a statement.

The Duqu virus, which was discovered in October by Symantec, is thought by some experts to be the next big cyber security threat. It shares some of the code with Stuxnet, a malicious worm which targeted Iran’s nuclear program, but Duqu is specifically created for gathering intelligence data from agencies and corporations.

Microsoft’s statement did not include any additional details, but Symantec discovered that Duqu was initially infecting systems through a compromised Microsoft Word document which installs the malicious software after it’s opened.

Duqu infections have currently been confirmed in several countries, including France, Netherlands, Switzerland, India, Iran, Ukraine, Sudan and Vietnam.

[via Reuters, Symantec]

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, goldmund

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Computer giant Microsoft’s official YouTube channel appears to have been hacked Sunday morning. All of the official videos, including recent ad campaigns, have been removed from the account. In their place are short clips soliciting advertisers, not surprisingly, as the channel has some 24,000+ subscribers.

As of 1:30 p.m. ET, four videos have been uploaded to the account, all time-stamped within the past two hours. A fifth video, most recently uploaded, seems to have been removed. The video, “Garry’s Mod – Escape the Box,” featured what appeared to be an animated gunman shooting at the inside of a construction box.

The channel’s description reads, “I DID NOTHING WRONG I SIMPLY SIGNED INTO MY ACCOUNT THAT I MADE IN 2006 :/.”

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The Occupy Wall Street movement, a series of nationwide demonstrations that opposes corporate greed and social inequality, has caught fire this past week.

Professional unions joined with the protesters last week, including the United Auto Workers, the United Federation of Teachers and National Nurses United. Several political figures have shown support as well, such as Vice President Joe Biden and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have both said that they sympathize with Occupy Wall Street protestors’ feelings of anger towards big banks’ role in the financial crisis.

The Occupy Wall Street movement began in July after anti-consumerist group Adbusters called for an occupation of Wall Street on Sept. 17. It quickly gained support from groups like Anonymous, who managed to slow and then shut down NYSE.com from about 3:35 p.m. to around 3:37 p.m. today.

Around 1,000 protesters showed up for the first protest. Over the subsequent four weeks, the protests have gained steam and have drawn the attention of the mainstream media. The protests have also expanded — about 1,400 Occupy Everywhere communities have taken form on Meetup.

The web chatter about #OccupyWallStreet has been significant as well and has been a large part of how the protesters have communicated. The protests were the subject of more than 0.5% of all tweets at its peak on Saturday, Oct. 1 according to Trendistic.

One Tumblr blog, We Are The 99 Percent, allows protesters and sympathizers to upload stories about why they protest, or why they support those who march. Most submissions include stories of financial and personal woes, as well as stories of how “Corporate America” has failed them in some way or another. The protests have even spurred at least one Craigstlist Missed Connection: two people arrested together on the Brooklyn Bridge and were in neighboring jail cells afterwords.

Protester videos and photos have also become widely circulated, most notably a video that quickly went viral on YouTube of alleged police brutality. The protesters have also created their own newspaper, called the Occupied Wall Street Journal. You can see the first edition of the publication here.

Are you there? Please share any pictures you may have with the Mashable community by uploading to the widget below, or tell your story in the comments section.

So you can get a scope of the protest, we have embedded a livestream below.

Livestream: Occupy Wall Street

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The sound-free video, above, leaked on the Japanese forum AppVV.com, appears to show a 4S being put through its paces. The BrowserMark number is significant as it’s roughly double the number you’ll get on an iPhone 4 running iOS 5 — meaning the iPhone 4S will browse the web at twice the speed of its predecessor.

The site does not explain how the phone was obtained ahead of launch. So how do we know it really is an iPhone 4S? Because Siri appears to be baked right into the OS — note the preferences screen that allows you to select English (in Australian, British or American dialects), French or German. Also note the options to have Siri talk back and to activate the service when you lift the phone to your ear.

Want to learn more about Siri? We have its history, and an interview with the app’s co-creator, here.

[Via Macrumors]

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Traffic is surging to Twitter and major media websites in the UK as the London riots enter their fourth night.

Twitter has been the biggest beneficiary of the unrest, according to web analytics firm Experian Hitwise. The social information network accounted for 1 in every 170 UK Internet visits on August 8. Hitwise also reports that approximately 3.4 million people from the UK visited Twitter’s homepage yesterday, easily setting a new record.

The social media impact of the London Riots seems to be limited to Twitter, though. Facebook, the world’s largest social network, didn’t receive a similar traffic spike. Hitwise attributes this anomaly to the fact that Twitter’s most prolific users are located in London postal codes, while Facebook is more dominant in the northern UK.

News and media websites also gained traffic as a result of the London riots. Traffic to UK news and media sites increased by 14% between Monday and Tuesday. The BBC was the biggest benefactor, garnering a third of all Internet visits to UK news and media websites. Sky News was also a big winner, thanks to a surge in searches related to the riots.

Social media and mobile technology have been playing a major role in the riots. Rioters have been using BlackBerry Messenger to organize their activities, while other citizens have utilized Twitter and Facebook to organize riot cleanups.

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Adobe released a public preview of Adobe Edge, its new web motion and interaction design tool, on Monday.

Edge enables users to create animated content using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript — not Flash. It’s the first professional-grade HTML5 editing tool on the market and is currently available for free, as the company is looking for feedback from developers.

Interestingly enough, Adobe Edge shares the name with Adobe’s free newsletter, which is bound to create some confusion among users.

The product, which relies on strict HTML standards and does not incorporate Flash, is not meant to replace existing web design tools like Dreamweaver or Flash, but to coexist with them, enhancing Adobe’s position as a leader in the future of Web infrastructure, especially as HTML5 becomes increasingly important in the world of mobile.

When Mashable spoke with Paul Gubbay, Adobe’s VP of design and web engineering, last September, he made it clear that the company is interested in supporting both platforms. The following month, Adobe launched a Flash-to-HTML5 converter, a first step towards supporting HTML5.

Adobe is further backing up that position with the launch of Adobe Edge, and promises fast-paced updates to the software to keep up with frequent changes to HTML5 itself.

Adobe released the video preview embedded below last month. Take a look, download it, test it out and let us know what you think about it.

[via VentureBeat]

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This post reflects the opinions of the author and not necessarily those of Mashable as a publication.

David Berkowitz is Senior Director of Emerging Media & Innovation for digital marketing agency 360i, where he develops social media and mobile programs for marketers spanning the media & entertainment, retail, travel, and CPG industries.

Something about Google’s +1 doesn’t add up.

The search giant’s social media initiative, well covered by this outlet, represents a big change in thinking. The concept, revolutionary enough, is that instead of trusting a search engine’s algorithm to deliver the most relevant search results, one should trust their friends’ preferences, along with the preferences of all other searchers.

Both concepts are viable today. Generally speaking, Internet users are well accustomed to receiving recommendations from friends, solicited and unsolicited, and then acting on them. We are also largely comfortable trusting the feedback of strangers, whether they tell us a book on Amazon is worth reading, a hotel on TripAdvisor is clean, or a restaurant on Yelp has the best lobster frittata you’ve ever tasted.

A big selling point of sites like Amazon, TripAdvisor and Yelp is the input of millions of consumers. If those sites relied solely on algorithmically generated recommendations without consumer input, they might not be nearly as successful. Yet with search, we are so dependent on the algorithm. Search is so complicated that an algorithm better know what’s more relevant, or all hope is lost. Why trust our friends and strangers when we can trust the masterwork of the world’s best engineers slaving away for over a decade?

With +1, Google told us to change. This process of change has three significant challenges:

• We must notice that the results are different. After a decade of habitually scanning headlines and brief textual synopses, it’s hard to notice anything else.
• We must act on a +1 listing, which then brings up some information about Google Profiles and a whole new system that for many will be an added hindrance. The beauty of search to date has been its simplicity for the users – enter a query and click a result, ad infinitum.
• We must notice the +1 votes from peers and others, realize that these are different, and act on them accordingly.
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All of these challenges to the process pale in comparison to a challenge of perception that can shake the foundations of Google’s image. The +1 listings must be different enough for users to care. If the results with the most +1’s are dramatically different from the order proffered by Google’s algorithm, that means either the people or the algorithm are wrong. Which listing should users trust?

Google for once is ambiguous, suggesting that there are two right answers. In reality, the difference between the two answers must be small, as for the vast majority of queries, there are only 10 natural results displayed out of potentially millions or billions of pages, so Google’s algorithm remains the true arbiter. Yet it still feels like there’s a chance for Google to be wrong, and that goes against more than a decade of users’ faith in the doctrine of Google infallibility.

What +1 lacks most is Facebook. Soon after +1 launched, a browser plug-in was released that shows the number of Facebook “Likes” for any search listing in Google. While the plug-in is currently a bit sluggish, it is fast enough to make its likes far more noticeable than +1’s. Facebook’s concept of liking has been ingrained quickly enough to catch on, so it also benefits from a “first mover” advantage.

That in turn reveals the answer to our mathematical problems. Google +1 will forever be -1 as long as it doesn’t incorporate Facebook activity. Today, at least, Facebook has the richest data for most Internet users’ social connections. Yet there is value in Google +1 with peers influencing search results, so Google +1 without Facebook adds up to far more than zero. How much of a positive it is remains a mystery. Like most math problems throughout history, there is an answer out there, waiting to be discovered.

---

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Firefox 4 has been downloaded over 5 million times in under 24 hours since it became available, according to Mozilla’s official download stats page.

Currently, the counter shows 5,755,000 downloads, most of which originated from Europe (2.5 million), followed by North America (1.6 million) and Asia (1 million).

In comparison, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 was downloaded 2.35 million times in its first 24 hours of availability.

The final version of Firefox 4 brings full CSS3 and HTML5 support, a redesigned UI, App Tabs, syncing accross multiple devices and Panorama, a feature that lets you organize tabs into groups using a drag and drop interface.

[via CNET]

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As Japan digs out from its worst earthquake and tsunami in recent history, and engineers scramble to contain the damage at the Fukushima nuclear plant, another crisis is unfolding behind the scenes: massive disruption to the global supply chain.

As relatively unimportant as it may seem, Japan’s factories are the lifeline for electronics companies the world over. Some 20% of all semiconductors and 40% of all flash memory chips sold in the world’s smartphones, tablets, cameras and computers are made in Japan. Manufacturers are facing a drastic reduction in supply, which could have significant knock-on effects in earnings, employment — and the global economy as a whole.

So which companies and products are most at risk? Here’s what we know so far:

Toshiba makes NAND Flash memory chips used in the iPhone, iPad and a string of tablets launching this year. Prices of the 32GB NAND chip jumped nearly 20% in component markets Monday. Toshiba says it is examining damage to its plant, and has no date set for reopening. Toshiba President Norio Sasaki has more important things on his mind at the moment: Prime Minister Naoto Kan has ordered him to help with efforts to stop radiation leaking from the Fukushima plant, according to reports.

Most affected products: The iPad 2 and similar tablets.

Sony, the nation’s largest consumer electronics exporter, shut down six factories last week and another two this week. One of those factories took a direct hit from the tsunami. The plants are all involved in making Blu-ray discs, magnetic heads, PlayStation 3s and lithium-ion batteries. The company makes about 10% of the world’s laptop batteries. The factories are likely to remain shut for at least the next two weeks.

Most affected products: Blu-ray DVDs, PlayStations, PC laptops.

Texas Instruments lost two of its plants making wafers and DLP chips. A spokesperson told Reuters it would take until July for them to come back online.

Most affected products: DLP TVs, video projectors.

Hitachi has six manufacturing facilities in the quake-struck north of Japan, all of them now closed, all of them now being inspected.

Most affected products: Plasma TVs, LCD TVs, camcorders and DVD players.

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After months of beta testing, Microsoft has finally released the final version of Internet Explorer 9 to the masses.

Microsoft debuted the new browser at a launch event at South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas. Dean Hachamovitch, the corporate vice president of Internet Explorer, told the story of how Microsoft built IE9 from scratch.

Microsoft launched the IE9 beta last year to generally positive reviews. Last month, Microsoft unveiled the IE9 release candidate. In total, the IE9 Beta and release code have already been downloaded more than 40 million times.

IE9 is not just an update to IE8, but a complete rebuild of Microsoft’s popular but maligned browser. It boasts radical speed and graphics improvements, thanks to its increased adherence to web standards and use of hardware acceleration. On stage, Hachamovitch touted its advanced support for HTML5 and its UI improvements. Everything from the back button to the taskbar has been revamped.

Microsoft is also touting IE9′s security features. Hachamovitch outlined the company’s take on privacy earlier this year at CES. IE9 includes tracking protection (its implementation of the “Do Not Track” list) and stronger filters against malware.

The final version of Internet Explorer 9 will be available for download at midnight ET/9:00 PM PT at BeautyoftheWeb.com.

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