Using the same password for multiple Web pages is the Internet-era equivalent of having the same key for your home, car and bank safe-deposit box.

Even though a universal password is like gold for cyber crooks because they can use it to steal all of a person’s sensitive data at once, nearly half the Internet users queried in a new survey said they use just one password for all their online accounts.

Microsoft will release a third service pack for SQL Server 2005, just before the next version of the server software comes out. Service Pack 3 is expected to come out after the release to manufacturing of SQL Server 2008, which is scheduled to happen in the third quarter this year.

Microsoft didn’t reveal much about what the service pack would include, except to say in a Tuesday blog post that it will contain all cumulative updates to the software plus some additional fixes to bugs that customers have reported on MS Connect, a Microsoft Web site for customer feedback.

Panos Anastassiadis didn’t click on the fake subpoena that popped into his inbox on Monday morning, but he runs a computer security company. Others were not so lucky.

In fact, security researchers say that thousands have fallen victim to an email scam in which senior managers such as Anastassiadis are told that they have been sued in federal court and must click on a Web link to download court documents. Victims of the crime are taken to a phony Web site where they are told they need to install browser plug-in software to view the documents. That software gives the criminals access to the victim’s computer.

Thistype of targeted email attack, called "spear-phishing," is a variation on the more common "phishing" attack. Both attacks use fake email messages to try to lure victims to malicious Web sites, but with spear-phishing the attackers try to make their messages more believable by including information tailored to the victim.

ActiveX controls made up most of all browser plug-in vulnerabilities in the second half of 2007, according to Symantec.

The company has just released its semi-annual Web security report and in it said that Microsoft’s technology, primarily used to create add-ins for Internet Explorer, accounted for 79 percent of the 239 plug-in bugs discovered between July and December 2007. The plug-in with the next-highest number of flaws was Apple’s QuickTime, which had just 8 percent of the six-month’s total.

Only one vulnerability in a plug-in for Mozilla’s Firefox browser was detected in the same period, meaning Firefox’s extensions–the moniker Mozilla uses for plug-ins–accounted for only 0.4 percent of all found flaws.

Microsoft plans to launch its Live Mesh offering next week at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco but so far is not revealing details of the service.

On Friday night, Microsoft sent out email invitations to a "Mesh it up" event on April 24 featuring demos by Microsoft "experts." The invitation includes a reference to the mesh.com Web site, which currently requires visitors to sign in with a Windows Live ID and then displays an error message.

Microsoft declined to offer any more details about Live Mesh except to say that it will launch next week and further information will become available on Tuesday evening, April 22.

Microsoft’s operating systems run most personal computers around the globe and are a cash cow for the world’s largest software maker. But you’d never confuse a Windows user with the passionate fans of Mac OS X or even the free Linux operating system. Unless it’s someone running Windows XP, a version Microsoft wants to retire.

Fans of the six-year-old operating system set to be pulled off store shelves in June have papered the Internet with blog posts, cartoons and petitions recently. They trumpet its superiority to Windows Vista, Microsoft’s latest PC operating system, whose consumer launch last January was greeted with lukewarm reviews.

Microsoft on Monday unveiled new content partners for its Silverlight technology and provided details of a forthcoming digital rights management (DRM) technology for its multimedia platform.

The company made these announcements to promote the use of its Silverlight multimedia development and deployment technology to broadcasters at the annual NAB Show 2008 in Las Vegas.

Among the companies that now have projects based on Silverlight are Madison Square Garden (MSG) Interactive, Tencent, Abertis Telecom, Terra Networks Operations, SBSi, MNet and Yahoo Japan, Microsoft said.

In a presentation at a Gartner-sponsored conference in Las Vegas, analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald said Microsoft is overburdened by nearly two decades of legacy code and has not responded to the market, and it faces serious competition that will make Windows moot unless the software developer acts. Linux, Mac and other operating systems have been around, viable and available for some time, yet none has really chipped away at Microsoft’s dominance on the desktop. What’s more, by all accounts, the Windows Server Market is expanding, not contracting.

A Microsoft manager has said that one of the security features in Vista was deliberately designed to annoy users to put pressure on third-party software makers to make their applications more secure.

David Cross, a product unit manager at Microsoft, was the group program manager in charge of designing User Account Control (UAC), which, when activated, requires people to run Vista in standard user mode rather than having administrator privileges, and offers a prompt if they try to install a program.

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