Piergiorgio Zambrini, aka Zibri, the creator of popular ZiPhone jailbreak/unlock hack for the iPhone (whom iPhone World got to interview a while ago), has decided to call it quits.

In a message posted on his website Zibri states that due to a recent addition to his family he will no longer maintain ZiPhone. And to prove that he is serious, he is even selling the ziphone.org domain that served as official website for ZiPhone for a long time.

A security software firm has warned against downloading the pirated copies of the Windows 7 beta which are available through torrent sites. It says there’s a serious risk of copies being infected with malware.

Fortify’s Rob Rachwald (pictured) says “The problem with this version is that there’s absolutely no way of authenticating that the early build hasn’t been tampered with by a hacker. They may have coded all sorts of malware into the 2.44 gigabytes file.”

The firm also points out that it’s particularly difficult to check a pirated operating system for viruses when it isn’t yet on the market. It’s not the same as downloading a program and running it in XP or Vista. By definition there’s no guarantee that your usual virus scanner will actually work when you come to run the pirated Windows 7. And if anyone has tampered with this copy of the operating system, chances are they’ve also disabled the security measures built into Windows itself.

Some nasty pranksters, likely associated with Web forum 4Chan, have hacked into Apple gossip mainstay MacRumors’ live-blog coverage of Tuesday’s Macworld keynote. Hosted on a separate domain, MacRumorsLive.com, the site was plagued by offensive messages about Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ health and general inanity (i.e. “SEX ME”) before finally succumbing to “technical difficulties.”

It remains uncertain whether the pranksters actually brought down the site, or whether MacRumors voluntarily took it down to keep things under control. It’s pretty clear, however, that this was the work of 4Chan, which has gained both respect and notoriety (depending on who you ask) over the past year for its persistent protests against the controversial Scientology sect in the form of an offshoot group called “Anonymous.”

Over on 4Chan’s labyrinthine forums, a couple of threads (warning: contains explicit language) hint at members’ collusion to take down MacRumors Live, and the hacked live blog was peppered with declarations of “4CHAN FTW” (that’s “for the win,” for those who stepped in late).

Hackers hijacked the Twitter accounts of more than 30 celebrities and organizations, including President-elect Barack Obama, Britney Spears and Fox News, early on Monday, the company confirmed today.

“This morning we discovered 33 Twitter accounts had been ‘hacked,’ including prominent Twitter-ers like Rick Sanchez and Barack Obama,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said in post to the company blog. “We immediately locked down the accounts and investigated the issue. Rick, Barack and others are now back in control of their accounts.”

Earlier in the day, the hacked accounts had been used to send malicious messages, many of them offensive. CNN correspondent Rick Sanchez’s account, for example, tweeted a message claiming that “i am high on crack right now might not be coming to work today,” while Fox News’ Twitter update reported “Breaking: Bill O Riley [sic] is gay,” referring to the network’s conservative talk show host.

Apple Vice President Philip Schiller took the stage here Tuesday for the keynote address at the Macworld Conference & Expo to unveil software upgrades, introduce an ultralight notebook and announce iTunes pricing changes.

The company’s iLife ‘09 will include a feature called Faces that finds and organizes a gallery of a user’s friends in his or her photos, thanks to face-recognition software, Schiller said. A feature called Places will organize pictures around where they were taken, he added.

This would be accomplished through an interactive world map with GPS geotagging that will pinpoint the location of every photo users take, as long as they have a GPS chip in their camera or iPhone.