Web site of Malaysia's foreign ministry compromised

In today's podcast: Web site of Malaysia's foreign ministry compromised; Stolen Twitter documents appear on Techcrunch; Japanese worry about Net privacy.

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Recent visitors to the Web site of Malaysia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs may have come away with something other than a better understanding of Malaysian foreign policy or the country's visa requirements. The Web site was compromised by an unknown attacker and used to redirect visitors to another site containing malicious code. The attackers added invisible iframes -- which apparently directed visitors to Web sites that could contain malware or redirect them to other sites that did -- to the home page of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site. The Web site has been fixed, according to Websense Security Labs, which reported the problem in a recent security bulletin. Details of the links contained in the iframes, as well as details of the malicious code that was used on these sites, were not available.

A hacker has reportedly obtained and distributed more than 300 confidential documents pertaining to Twitter's business affairs. The documents were reportedly stored on Google Apps. The hacker apparently accessed documents with potentially sensitive information about Twitter employees, company finances, partner agreements and other topics, and forwarded the documents to media outlets such as TechCrunch, which reported on the data breach Tuesday. On how the breach occurred, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington writes that "the original security hole seems to be Google, via Google Apps for your Domain. Some passwords were guessed and things started to fall apart from there. Most (or all) of these documents were downloaded from Google's servers." The exposure has raised ethical questions about whether any or all of the exposed documents should be published.

Four out of five Japanese Internet users feel are worried about their privacy and feel insecure when using the Internet, according to the results of a government survey. The survey, published as part of the annual White Paper on Information and Communications in Japan, found Internet users in Japan are worried about multiple aspects of being online. However, the government said their worries might be out of proportion with the actual risks they face. Around 32 percent of those surveyed feel insecure with regard to their privacy online while a further 50 percent said they feel relatively insecure, the survey found.

Palm confirmed late today that Pre owners can no longer use Apple's iTunes to sync their smartphones to Macs or PCs. Apple updated iTunes to Version 8.2.1 today, and in its usual cryptic style said that the new version "provides a number of important bug fixes and addresses an issue with verification of Apple devices." Pre users quickly began reporting on Palm's support forum that the reference to "verification of Apple devices" meant iTunes syncing was broken.

... And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I’m Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.