Microsoft has taken aim at a rogue antivirus program called Internet Antivirus Pro.

The company’s latest update to its Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool, (MSRT) released Tuesday, adds detection for this dubious program, which masquerades as security software.

Like all of these rogue antivirus products, Internet Antivirus Pro tries to trick victims into installing the software. It pops up a fake warning message and then pretends to scan the victim’s computer. But instead of scanning for malicious software, Internet Antivirus downloads password-stealing software that looks for FTP user names and passwords, presumably so that its creators can install their software on Web servers.

Internet Antivirus installs a browser component that displays fake messages, and it also pops up a fake Windows Security Center, Microsoft said in a blog posting Tuesday.

Rather than offering a release candidate as had been expected, Mozilla this week released a preview of its upcoming Firefox 3.5 browser, adding fixes to bugs and the browser’s JavaScript engine as well as improvements for video and audio playback.

Firefox 3.5 Preview will be offered to the 800,000-plus users of FireFox 3.5 Beta, with Mozilla looking for developer testing and community feedback. Although not a release candidate, the preview is considered stable enough for daily browsing use, Mozilla said. Testing has not been completed to the point where the software could be declared a release candidate.

Microsoft Corp issued software to fix a record 31 security flaws in its programs, and Adobe Systems Inc warned that glitches in its products could let hackers take control of a user’s PC.

Microsoft released patches on Tuesday that repair vulnerabilities in Windows, Office and Internet Explorer, as well as key pieces of software that businesses use in their data centers.

Adobe said in a security bulletin on its website that Reader and Acrobat users should update their software to the newest versions. Additional software is available if those releases are not compatible with a customer’s PC.

Google Inc introduced software to make it easier for businesses using Microsoft Corp’s Outlook to switch to its Web-based communications and collaboration products.

The Internet company said on Tuesday that its new software can easily transfer data from a Microsoft Exchange server to Google’s cloud-based online service.

The new product allows business users to continue using the Outlook client for email and other tasks, but the back-end functionality and data storage would move to Google, instead of residing on a company’s internal servers running Microsoft software.

The product, Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, will be available immediately as part of the existing Premier version of Google apps, which costs $50 per business user but is also available to educational and nonprofit customers for free.