If there's one type of software news that always brightens my day, it's news that a purveyor of crapware has lost a legal game of Rochambault. This time, it was Kaspersky snatching victory away from perennial nuisance Zango.

Zango has a history of rising from the grave like some horrible software zombie. Their other incarnations include HotBar and 180solutions, both of which are familiar to those of you who wrestle with malware on a regular basis. Want to read about what Zango does? You'll have to visit Wikipedia or some other site, because the Zango website itself is a "closed user community."

In the lawsuit, Zango claimed Kaspersky should be ordered to reclassify Zango's programs as nonthreatening and asked that the court "prevent Kaspersky Lab's security software from blocking Zango's potentially undesirable programs."

Thankfully, the appellate court upheld an earlier ruling that granted Kaspersky "Good Samaratin immunity," and that they were free to classify Zango as adware and treat it as such.

This isn't the first time Zango has lost in court. Will it be the last? Doubtful. Zango probably still has a little money left to blow on spurious lawsuits, and there are plenty of other anti-malware developers they can bitch about.

I've been hanging around Download Squad HQ enough to know that our readers love hearing about Twitter ad nauseam, and that none of those readers fear being RickRolled or ever click on links originating from profiles they wouldn't trust. But just in case you should happen upon this post from an outside source, and you aren't a regular DLS reader (gasp), there's something you need to know.

The BBC reported today that the first Twitter-specific attack has been discovered by the fine folks at Kaspersky. The fake profile uses the name "Pretty Rabbit" in Portuguese -- and it's frustrating me to all ends that I can't seem to find a reference or semi-accurate translation of what that user name might actually be -- and claims that clicking the tweeted link will take the viewer to YouTube for some adult video action.

But because there is so much wrong in this world, errant clickers don't get to see the adult video -- at least, not without paying the price. Instead, a fake version of Flash is downloaded, which has the hidden skill of harvesting all sorts of data and transforming your beloved Twittering machine into a zombie node, allowing bad men, women and rabbits to wreak criminal havoc all over the web.

Similar worms have been discovered on MySpace and Facebook, so please, choose your friends wisely.

The offending malicious applications only affect Windows-based systems. No word on whether the faux-Flash works with Linux or Mac, so while those users (who are over 18, of course) are safe from the malware, they will probably not get to see the exciting video Pretty Rabbit in Portuguese was referring to.

UPDATE: On behalf of everyone at DLS, I'd like to give a big thanks to Ed Mercer for the heads up that though the Portuguese username literally translates "Pretty Rabbit," the word "coelhinha" is often associated with Playboy Playmates/Bunnies. "Pretty Playmate" may be a more accurate translation in this case.

The gaffe came in the form of a routine virus update this past Wednesday night. Kaspersky mistakenly identified Explorer as an infected file. For those not familiar with Windows' internals, Explorer serves as the core of the Windows interface, handling the Desktop, Start bar, and file management. Without this core component, Windows becomes inoperable.

Realizing their mistake, the company pulled the flawed definition about two hours later. However, untold numbers of customers were already experiencing the quarantine, and in some cases deletion of explorer.exe. While this isn't the first time a virus company has make a false positive, it is none the less a serious mistake that will certainly mean serious downtime for some organizations. Or at least, the organizations that haven't switched to Linux or Mac by now.