Another tsunami of United States government documents is up on Wikileaks. We're talking confidential cables between the US State Department and 274 embassies around the world. 15,652 of them are classified "secret," according to the site.

The big story circulating around the globe is that Arab nations have been urging the US to bear down on Iran.

In a 300+ page report (PDF) today, the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission provided the US Congress with a detailed overview of what's been happening in China—including a curious incident in which 15 percent of the world's Internet traffic suddenly passed through Chinese servers on the way to its destination.

Here's how the Commission describes the incident, which took place earlier this year:

It has been a brutal week for celebrity web account hackers. As we reported, on Friday a Federal judge sentenced a University of Tennessee student engaged in the pastime to a year in the slammer. David Kernell was caught sleuthing into former Vice-Presidential candidate and pundit Sarah Palin's Yahoo! e-mail account. He posted some of the photos he found on various image sites. 

In the course of the trial, the economics student's lawyers managed to dodge wire-fraud and identity theft charges. But the court found Kernell guilty of misdemeanor computer intrusion and a felony count of obstruction of justice (deleting evidence)—hence the prison time.

Botnets have penetrated most Fortune 500 companies, and the United States leads the world in PCs infected with bots.

And Mac users beware—a new Trojan variant attacks Mac OS systems via social networking sites. If you see a message on a social network like Facebook that says "Is this you in the video?" clicking the item could deliver your computer to a botnet—a network of hijacked machines deployed to steal content and launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks on other sites.

Britain's Information Commissioner won't fine Google for its WiFi data collection snafu, despite the incident being a "significant breach" of UK law. Commissioner Christopher Graham had the power to fine Google up to £500,000, but said Wednesday that he would rather be content with a written promise from Google that such a thing wouldn't happen again.

Google admitted in May that its Street View cars had been inadvertently collecting bits of data from publicly available WiFi networks as they drove down the street. Unsurprisingly, officials around the world reacted poorly to the news, with several governments demanding to see the data to ensure that no sensitive information was collected. The lawsuits began piling up too, with Google asking to roll eight of them together in the US into one giant lawsuit to make things simpler.

"We did not want this data, have never used any of it on our products and services, and have sought to delete it as quickly as possible," Google said in a statement issued to the Associated Press Wednesday. The company added that it was "profoundly sorry," and that it was working to improve things internally to ensure that similar screw-ups don't happen again.

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A new trojan horse has cropped up that affects Mac OS X (and Windows as well), primarily disguised as a video flitting around social networking sites. When users click an infected link, a Java applet is launched that downloads multiple files, including an installer that runs automatically without users' knowledge.

The Trojan, dubbed trojan.osx.boonana.a by security firm SecureMac, appears as a message on social networking sites such as Facebook that reads, "Is this you in this video?" When the user clicks the link, a Java applet runs, allowing the system to download several files and install a program that can bypass the usual password verification OS X requires for installation.

The malware launches automatically on startup, communicates with command and control servers, and can also crack user accounts on other sites to continue to spread itself as spam.

SecureMac asserts that because the initial phase of the trojan runs on Java, it can spread itself to both Mac OS X and Windows. SecureMac doesn't say explicitly how it differs on Windows, only that the payload includes "other files" that are directed at Windows.

Disabling Java in your browser can help you avoid infection, but the problem is solved easily enough—don't click shady links. For those already under Boonana's spell, though, SecureMac has created a free removal tool. The company also reminds Mac users that as Apple's market share grows, they need to be mindful of increased attention from hackers.

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FaceTime for Mac was released yesterday with an apparently slack-jawed, if not exactly gaping, security hole. Macworld Germany has noted that once a user has logged into FaceTime for Mac with his or her Apple ID, the password on the account can be changed from FaceTime without knowledge of the old password, leaving the account ripe for the picking by any passersby of the physical computer.

The sabotage of an Apple ID is as easy as navigating through FaceTime's preferences menu to the "View Account" page. Once there, whoever happens to be sitting at the computer can change the associated account password.

As long as the password satisfies all the security rules, the change instantly applies across the Apple ID account. For example, changing the password in FaceTime and subsequently accessing the iTunes Store will result in a prompt from iTunes to re-enter your password, and the old one will not work.

Signing out of FaceTime won't help, either—the program saves your password to the field, and there's no way to opt out of password memory. FaceTime will not let users delete the only e-mail address associated with the account, so if you've already signed up, you're kind of stuck.

If your account is hijacked, the worst-case scenario is your tormentor going on an iTunes Store shopping spree on your dime. If you're wise to the password change, you can flip the password back just as easily. Still, you might want to maintain constant vigilance until Apple releases some kind of hotfix. Especially if the office prankster asks if he can use your computer to FaceTime with his sick grandmother. 

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