Security researchers report that Google’s Orkut was the target of what appeared to be a relatively benign worm that experts say illustrates the ability of hackers to drop code into social-media sites.

Orkut has millions of registered users, some 700,000 of which were affected by the worm over a period of 24 hours.

The exploit was contained in a JavaScript file, aptly named “virus.js.” When Orkut users received e-mail about a new scrapbook entry and clicked through to the site, the browser downloaded and executed the embedded virus.js file automatically — without the need for any user intervention.

Sanitizing Rich Media

The malware seemed to do at least two things — send messages to friends to perpetuate itself and add the infected account to an Orkut community “Infectados pelo Vírus do Orkut,” which was created by the script author, according to McAfee.

“This clearly illustrates the issue with allowing rich content on social/professional networking sites, and not sanitizing it enough,” said Vinay Mahadik, a member of the McAfee Avert Labs team. “The ability to add Flash/JavaScript content to Orkut scraps was only recently introduced.”

Google did not return calls seeking comment, but apparently the company has remedied the problem. As of Thursday, Symantec reported, the virus.js script is no longer available on the site and it seems as if there have been adequate checks implemented by Orkut to validate content when posting a scrapbook entry.

Social Worms Rising

“Worms in social networks are certainly not a new concept. We’ve seen it in the past,” said Oliver Friedrichs, director of Symantec’s Security Response. Friedrichs noted that MySpace was affected by a worm early last year that allowed an attacker to add over one million people to the author’s profile.

Worms are becoming increasingly popular across social-network sites, he said. The good news is that these types of worms are not typically malicious, he explained, while the bad news is that users can’t do much to protect themselves other than stay off of social networks altogether.

“This is a little more difficult to protect against in that the social-networking site itself needs to take steps to prevent this,” Friedrichs said. “This is generally a shortcoming on the site itself rather than what consumers can do.”

Google-placed ads on web pages have been reportedly hijacked by “trojan software” that replaces text ads with alternate ads from other providers, according to BitDefender, a Romanian antivirus company.

Clicks are redirected to rogues servers that display third party ads instead of those from Google reports Reuters. Google made a statement on Wednesday stating “We have cancelled customer accounts that display ads redirecting users to malicious sites or that advertise a product violating our software principles. We actively work to detect and remove sites that serve malware in both our ad network and in our search results. We have manual and automated processes in place to detect and enforce these policies.”

The Trojan attacks Google AdSense. Virus analyst for BitDefender Attila Balazs said to Reuters “This is a serious situation that damages users and Webmasters alike.” He continued to say “Users are affected because the advertisements and/or the linked sites may contain malicious code. Webmasters are affected because the Trojan takes away viewers and thus a possible money source from their websites.”

There are a lot of web applications out there that can be used in our daily live. Especially if you are a business person how manage a lot of projects and clients. But with the large selection of application and software, anyone can get lost in all the features and benefits.

The past few days, I’ve been working with a client who uses a project management application (online) for his work. The application has a lot of nice features like team work and area, time analysis, work analysis etc… But it has one big flow. I have no idea how to use it. Don’t think I am not computer savvy or something similar, I’ve build hundreds of websites and web applications and I downloaded and tested almost every open source application out there. With all this experience, how come I still couldn’t use this project manager. Simply, because of the bad software design.

Even though they have a web interface, I have to download their desktop application to submit comments and other information. So I downloaded their software, installed and tried to use it. Whenever I select any option, they open a web browser and ask me to login again. Finally, I go back to the website (where I started at). They’ve added so many steps to accomplish a very simple task, something like writing a memo or adding comments. Everything can be done from the browser, I don’t need to download a desktop application that will take me back to the website so I can add some comments.

The second “Big & Bad” issue they had, is the Not user friendly forms. I tried to add a note to the application, so I got a form (the note was about the process of work). The form had 2 fields “From” and “To” with no additional details. As anyone using this app for the first time, I assumed “From” is from me, and “To” is to the project manager, which was odd because there were no options, just text fields. After I completed the form, I got an error :O The “From” field was suppose to be “Started Work at” and the “To” field is “Until” to count the hours. Couldn’t they just say “Start Time” and “End Time” or even better, “How many hours”. I correct the form and I have all the fields read, I still couldn’t submit the note. This time it said “I need to add a user”. That’s when I gave up, what user, where am I suppose to add him/her, what the hell am I suppose to do?

After looking around, I found their help section, but the pages I wanted were a 404 (not available)

Let’s say you stuck in this situation and need some support or help. With all the open source apps, supports is hard to come by and not everyone knows what they’re talking about. A lot of my friends having hard time using their CRM applications and don’t know what to do. That’s when a professional software support company like Sage Software comes in handy. Software support is one of the most critical part of running a business now and getting cost effective support when needed is importent. If you are stuck with your application and don’t know where to go, just visit Sage Software and let them help you out.

Where many companies are being ridiculed for their privacy practices, Ask.com is looking to increase the users’ control over their personal data by offering a new feature that allows them to delete information on their search queries.

The search engine’s homepage will feature a link called “AskEraser”. The link will also be on all search results pages with a choice whether the feature should be “On” or “Off” according to Reuters. Ask.com’s CEO Jim Lanzone said in an interview with Reuters, “We take significant steps to protect any data that’s stored in our servers, but for those people who want to take extra precautions, AskEraser let them take the issue completely off the table.”

When turned “On,” AskEraser deletes a user’s cookies, or identifying information from their computers. This feature has become available today in the U.S. and the U.K. and will become available globally next year.

Borrell Associates predicted a big gain in the overall local online ad market, with local search representing a big slice of the market share.

We’ll tell the yellow pages firms and local papers why they are doomed in a moment.

Ok, Borrell Associates has released their 2008 Outlook: Local Online Advertising report. They estimated next year’s total local ad market will reach a whopping $12.6 billion in spending.

Of that figure, Borrell said $5 billion will come from local search advertising. Another $1.3 billion should arrive as the local online video market triples from 2007.

Now for the bad news for the yellow pages and local news publishers, from the report:

“Next year will be a perplexing one for local media companies trying to tackle the Web. Most yellow pages publishers, cable companies, newspapers, radio stations and TV stations are still pinning their hopes on their traditional sales reps being able sell online ad packages. But there is increasing evidence to support the idea that a greater investment in an independent online sales force will be necessary to continue the growth these properties have enjoyed for the past few years.”

There is one thing that can potentially help the publishers that have been mentioned. Borrell suggested the pure-play Internet companies, like Google and Yahoo, may have an interest in partnering with local firms to bolster their local advertising presence.

We have seen this in the classified field, where Yahoo and its HotJobs site have a number of newspapers as partners to help sell job listings. Perhaps 2008 will be the year where these partnerships broaden in number and scope.