Internet security firm Symantec (proprietors of, among other things, Norton Anti-Virus) have released the results of research that they have dubbed the “Honey Stick Project”. In Project HoneyStick, researchers “lost” a total of 50 cell phones in various cities around North America, including NYC, Washington D.C., LA, San Francisco, and Ottawa, Canada. The aim was to see what the average citizen would do with a found cell phone: would they try to reunite it with its owner, or would they do something more sinister with it? It turns out that the answer is “both”.

If you think that politics makes for strange bedfellows, take a look at the effort to raise public awareness about cybercrime. Because we’ve seen no stranger pairing than the partnership between rapper Snoop Dogg (of Snoop Doggy Dogg fame) and Internet security outfit Symantec, of Norton Antivirus fame. In their “Hack is Wack” (“wack” as in “wacky”, even though we think it should be “Hack is Whack” as in “we’re going to whack those hackers” – but what do you expect from someone who spells it “Dogg” instead of “Snoop Dog”?) contest, average Joes and Janes can submit a rap-like anti-cybercrime message of any length under two minutes, in the hopes of winning a prize that includes a tricked-out laptop, a trip for two to LA to meet with Snoop’s management, and two tickets to a Snoop Dogg concert. Woof.

Malware pushers have been quick to exploit confusion over a patch that was released yesterday by Norton Security for users of older versions of Norton. The patch was accidentally unsigned, which caused Norton to throw an error referencing the “pifts.exe” file. As a result, hords of Norton users have been searching Google for pifts.exe (or searching in their other favourite search engine for pifs.exe).