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Apple’s iPhones are one of the hottest Christmas wish list items and soon they will be available at the nation’s biggest retailer – Wal-Mart. While neither Wal-Mart nor Apple will confirm, news is leaking that Wal-Mart will be selling the iPhones, which offer such additional, attractive features like global positioning system (GPS) and MP3 player, by the end of December.

A Wal-Mart employee from Uniondale, N.Y. told a reporter from the Associated Press today that Wal-Mart will start selling the iPhones, but he didn’t know when. The San Jose Mercury News reported last Friday that Wal-Mart is already training California employees in the cell phone department to sell the iPhones. This would make Wal-Mart the second mass-market retailer to sell the iPhone. Previously, the iPhone was only available for purchase through Apple until Best Buy started selling them in September.

There have been rumors of Wal-Mart selling a 4 GB iPhone for $99, although those rumors have not been confirmed yet. Many believe Apple co-founder Steve Jobs may wait until MacWorld in January to announce the release of a $99 iPhone.

If Wal-Mart joins the ranks of iPhone resellers, it will surely help cement Apple’s dominance in the cell phone industry.

There is a worm spreading quickly though Facebook called Koobface.  Like most worms, it seems innocent enough.  It appears to come as a message from a friend with a subject line about a new video or something similar.  When opened and the video is clicked to play, a message appears that says the newest version of Flash Player is not installed, but needs to be.

However, the file that is actually downloaded is not a new version of Flash Player, but malware.  When the link on the fake Flash site is clicked, it downloads malware called tinyproxy.exe.  This file loads to a proxy server called Security Accounts Manager.  The server will run next time the computer is rebooted, loading and listening to traffic on TCP port 9090 and all outgoing HTTP traffic.  In doing this, it tries to obtain sensitive data from your computer, including credit card numbers.  Koobface also sends infected users to bogus search engines sites when he or she tries to connect to Google, Yahoo, MSN, or Live.com.

Facebook is telling users who have been affected that they should run an anti-virus program and change their Facebook password immediately.  Anti-virus and security leader McAfee has warned users that while Facebook is working on the problem, there are many variants of Koobface and that “the situation is likely to get worse before it gets better.”

While it is not known how many of the 120 million Facebook users have been affected by the virus, Facebook is also pro-actively resetting some passwords, then sending users emails notifying them of the possibility of a virus. 

As always, it is best to avoid any messages with downloads or attachments unless it is know that it came from a trusted source.