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We don't know what it is with the sudden interest in acquiring security firms, but perhaps the AV industry is destined to follow the same consolidation and takeover path that the boutique PC business underwent not that long ago.

Let's recap. Intel in August purchased McAfee for $7.68 billion, a deal that stockholders from both sides were stoked about. And just a short while ago we reported that Trend Micro is at least listening to buyout offers, even if no one can afford the company. Now there's rumors that Symantec may be on the takeover table as well.

It all started when Jeffries & Co. analyst Katherine Egbert wrote in a report that Symantec could be worth $19-$20 a share to a buyer, though she added that a deal for the company isn't likely to happen. From there things start to get a little fuzzy, and now the rumor mill is somehow swirling with speculation that Microsoft might be interested in buying out Symantec. Several stock rumor sites are discussing the possibility, and that in turn has caused Symantec's stock to surge 6 percent.

Like Egbert, we view this as unlikely, though Microsoft certainly has the capital to pull something like this off. It's also worth pointing out the major shift into the mobile market thanks to the smartphone boom and emerging tablet craze, two areas that might benefit from specialized AV software.

Intel last month snatched up security firm McAfee for a cool $7.68 billion in a deal that was unanimously approved by both boards. As it turns out, McAfee isn't the only one being suited.

Trend Micro CEO Eva Chen admitted that several first-tier companies have shown interest in acquiring the security outfit. For the time being, Chen contends that Trend Micro would rather remain an independent entity, but since it's a publicly listed company, it's conceivable that an offer too good to refuse could come along and have shareholders clamoring to sell.

So how much would it take to buy a company like Trend Micro? Quite a bit. Though Intel paid McAfee a 60 percent premium over the company's market value, Chen says that Trend Micro would command even more, much more. The company has already ponied up $300 million to build a cloud computing infrastructure, and in 2009 Trend Micro set an internal goal of raising annual revenues from $1 billion to $2 billion within the next three years.

In other words, yes Trend Micro is open to offers, but only companies with money to burn need apply.

Image Credit: Trend Micro

Microsoft made a compelling case to the U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia, which has granted a motion essentially handing over to Microsoft permanent ownership of 276 Web domains used as command and control centers by the Waledac spam botnet.

District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema issued the temporary restraining order to take all 276 domains offline, an unusual move since the owner of the domains weren't in court to plead their case. This procedure is known as "ex parte," and normally a judge wouldn't give away property without the rightful owners present. As far as the judge is concerned, however, the registrants had every chance to step foward after being provided notices online and in print publications.

"It's open season on botnets," Microsoft senior attorney Richard Boscovich Sr. said in a statement. "The hunting licenses have been handed out, and we're coming back for more."

Microsoft said that during one recent seven-day period, it counted 58,000 PCs attempting 14.6 million connections to the 276 Waledac domains. At its peak in 2009, Waledac was responsible for some 1.5 billion spam messages per day.

We know it's hard to believe, but your Adobe Reader and/or Acrobat software is in need of some patching. That's according to Adobe, which is warning users of a critical vulnerability affecting Reader and Acrobat versions 9.3.4 and earlier.

That's the bad news. The even even worse news is that the vulnerability, when exploited, could crash your machine and potentially allow an attacker to seize control, Adobe says. And the really bad news is that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild.

Ready for the good news? Not so fast, we haven't covered the no-good terrible news. This nasty security hole -- the one the bad guys know about and are currently exploiting -- can't yet be plugged, though if it's any consolation, Adobe promises it's "in the process of evaluating the schedule for an update to resolve this vulnerability." Comforting, isn't it?

Alright, we're finally ready for some good news, and here it is. You don't have to use Adobe products to read those PDF files. One of our favorite free alternatives is Foxit's free Reader program available here.

What do you use to read PDF documents? Let us know in the comments section below.

Excuse us a moment while we die a little inside, an inevitable result of learning that teen pop idol Justin Bieber consumes 3 percent of Twitter's resources at any given time. Dude even has his own servers.

"Any any moment, Justin Bieber uses 3% of our infrastructure. Racks of servers are dedicated to him. - Twitter employee," Dustin Curtis tweeted.

Gizmodo claims that Dustin Curtis, a designer and blogger, was given his info by a real Twitter employee and that "his tweet is not a joke." But is that really true?

"At the moment, we are not making our user statistics public," Twitter insists.

Fair enough, but if it wasn't true, the microblogging service could have debunked the tweet and still held firm to its policy of not sharing user statistics. If this were an episode of Mythbusters, we'd have to at least rank this one as "Plausible."

For what it's worth, a followup tweet by Curtis claims that Justin Bieber isn't the only one with his own racks, and in fact "Most of the popular users on Twitter have dedicated servers for their accounts."

There's a new version of the Firefox 4 Beta now available for download, and according to Mozilla, this latest release boasts "super fast graphics" and "incredible new audio capabilities." Word up.

Among the specific changes:

• Firefox 4 Beta now takes full advantage of built-in graphics hardware in Windows PCs with DirectX 10, resulting in faster performance on graphics intensive websites
• New support for the HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) protocol for added security, giving websites the ability to auto-direct the browser to an encrypted connection
• A new Audio API exposes the raw audio data housed within the <video> and <audio> elements in HTML5

If you're already testing Firefox 4 Beta, you should receive an automatic update. For anyone else interested in giving the upcoming browser a test drive, you can download a copy here.

Image Credit: Mozilla

No one likes loose ends. They’re messy, inconclusive, and – in some cases – can potentially lead to the birth of morally questionable god babies. Fortunately, BioWare’s latest double-helping of downloadable content takes some major loose ends and ties them tight in both Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect 2.

First up, Dragon Age is going on a Witch Hunt, which also happens to be the last we’ll see of Ferelden until Dragon Age 2 comes out. Without spoiling too much, let’s just say that a certain witchy woman’s back in the picture, and she’s up to no good. Remember that thing at the end of Origins? This might just have something to do with that.
 
Meanwhile, over in Mass Effect land, the Shadow Broker – who’s been a professional jerkwad and certified pain in Shepard’s ass since Mass Effect 1 – is finally (hopefully) going down in Lair of the Shadow Broker. If nothing else, though, you’ll definitely get to trash his house and continue your relationship with Liara, so we’re definitely not complaining.

Witch Hunt will run you $7.00, while Lair of the Shadow Broker comes in a bit heavier at $10.00. Both are out now, so what are you waiting for? Outer Space and Fantasy Land need saving from [SPOILERS] and [SPOILERS]! Now go [SPOILERS]!

These days, it’s rare for a game to drop out of nowhere and turn us into sweaty, drooling masses capable only of slobbering out the words “Woah,” “Dude,” and “[Speechless],” but to say Firefall pulled it off would be a serious understatement. See, the game heralds from Red 5 Studios, a startup founded by World of Warcraft’s former team lead and Tribes’ lead designer, and it basically woah, dude, woah, [speechless], woah, dude. Sorry about that. See what we mean, though?

The game’s described as a "a team-based action shooter that thrusts hundreds of players together into a lush, dynamic open world combining intense competitive multiplayer and large-scale cooperative gameplay," but that really doesn’t do it justice. The first in-game trailer – which you can see on Firefall’s official site – makes up for that in spades, however, and we highly, highly recommend you take a break from our halfway-incoherent ramblings to give it a look-see. 

However, for those unable to view the trailer for whatever incredibly unfortunate reason, here’s the gist: it’s like they’ve taken the best bits of WoW, Tribes, and Borderlands, baked them all into a casserole, and then served them up on a tray garnished with all our hopes and dreams. In other words: Jetpacks! Loot! Bug monsters! Jetpacks again!

If you hadn’t guessed already, this is one to watch. It’s currently slated to launch at the end of next year, but you can sign up for the beta test right now. So go! Make haste! If it helps, take this paddle and canoe down our giant river of drool! You (probably) won’t be sorry!    

Sony appears to be fighting a losing battle in preventing users from jailbreaking their PlayStation 3 consoles. In a recent Australian court ruling, a judge made permanent a previous ban on the distribution of the PSJailbreak dongle only to watch the software code behind a similar hack released for free into the wild. Naturally, Sony responded with a minor firmware update blocking these bits of code from working their mojo, but it's an ongoing cat and mouse game at best.

What we find most interesting, however, is how insanely easy it is to jailbreak a PS3. This is Sony's flagship console, after all, yet users have been able to jailbreak the device with everything from a Palm Pre to a calculator.

That's right, we said a calculator. Gizmodo has put together a collection of clips showing various devices cracking the PS3, and one of them includes the above mentioned hack (known as PSGroove) run from a TI-84. Pretty rad, no? Check it out below.

Malware writers are a cunning bunch, and if you don't keep up with the latest trickery, you could be in for a world of hurt. The latest ruse making the rounds is a nasty bit of code called Rogue:MSIL/Zeven that first detects what browser you're using and then spoofs said browser's warning page.

"This is meant to be a social engineering scheme in order to trick the user into downloading and installing the rogue, relying on the user's trust of his day-to-day browser," Microsoft warned in a recent blog post on its Malware Protection Center portal.

"The similarity between the fake warning pages is so accurate that it can trick even highly trained eyes."

It works with Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox, the three most popular browsers on the planet, though there are some telltale signs.

"In the Firefox page, for example, you can see it's not the real warning page because they misspelled 'out' and wrote 'Get me our of here,'" Microsoft explains.

The biggest telltale sign is that in all three browsers, the fake warning prompts potential victims to download an "update" or a "solution," which is not something you should ever see when a website is blocked.