Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock
Peanuts to Profits With Thor Schrock

ZDNet is reporting today that new research released by Dasient shows that as many as 1.3 million malicious ads are displayed to web surfers daily. The bad ads break down into two categories – 59% percent of them are drive-by downloads and 41% were fake-alert security software scams.

This new method of infecting PCs is called malvertising, and it is on the increase. Malicious attackers trick an ad network into running an ad that contains viruses or malware. The ad is then displayed on legitimate websites like Fox News, CNN, and others. Visitors get infected and if there is any blowback, it gets thrown at the website because most surfers don’t understand that its was the advertisement that nipped them

The research also indicated:

• The chances of getting infected from a malvertisement is 2x more likely on a weekend, and infected ads go undetected for up to 8 days on average
• 97% of Fortune 500 web sites are at a high risk of getting infected with malware through third party software providers like Java or Flash
• 69% of Fortune 500 companies use external Javascript and 64% of them are running outdated web applications

How Do The Bad Guys Trick Fortune 500 Companies?

The bad guys are posing as a legitimate company and tricking the advertising departments of legitimate media outlets to run the malvertisements. That is why they run the ads on the weekend when no one at the big companies is paying attention. For example, in September of 2009 the New Your Times got duped:

The creator of the malicious ads posed as Vonage, the Internet telephone company, and persuaded NYTimes.com to run ads that initially appeared as real ads for Vonage. At some point, possibly late Friday, the campaign switched to displaying the virus warnings. Because The Times thought the campaign came straight from Vonage, which has advertised on the site before, it allowed the advertiser to use an outside vendor that it had not vetted to actually deliver the ads, Ms. McNulty said. That allowed the switch to take place.

It Won’t Happen to Me, Right? WRONG

If you plan on keeping safe by avoiding weekend surfing, don’t get too comfortable.

In another report recently released by Google’s Security Team, they stated that the fake-alert malware infections are now making up 50 percent of all malware delivered via ads.

In this month’s issue, Consumer Reports ranked security software. The ONLY product that was able to protect your PC against malvertisements (malware infections) was Symantec’s Norton Internet Security and Norton 360 software.

NONE of the free security products protect your computer and MOST of the paid ones (including McAfee, Webroot, and Computer Associates) don’t get the job done either. Overall, Symantec was ranked above all others.

What are you doing to keep your computer safe? Have you been stung by one of these ads?

The KZKX morning show is one of the most highly-rated morning shows in Lincoln, so you can understand how THRILLED we were when Schrock Computer Company was featured during their show today!

Carol and Mick said some kind words about us as they introduced us to their listeners and kindly mentioned that we give a free hour of labor to all new customers so they can experience what real service feels like.

Have a listen to what they had to say about us!

Tim and the Animal took a couple minutes during the Morning Show today to throw a few kind words toward Schrock Innovations Computer Company.

We have done a LOT of work for Animal’s computers over the past few months and no matter what he sounds like on the air, he is one of the most good-hearted, caring person that I know. Tim is a true tech lover and he and I would talk for hours about the latest cameras and audio technology if the boss wasn’t around to break it up.

Have a listen to what they said about Schrock on the air. Thanks guys!

Schrock Innovations Computer Company was mentioned on the KFRX morning show today.

Over the past few months I have had the opportunity to get to know the KFRX staff and their show is awesome.

I have a special appreciation for the talent required to pull off a morning show, and after you listen to how they wove Schrock into the content of their morning show, you will understand why!

Listen to what was said on KFRX

Omaha, NE is a very different beast from Lincoln, NE. Everything is more expensive, less available, and more regulated.

Despite the challenges, Schrock Innovations is planning a massive expansion into Omaha in 2010. Replicating what we have done in Lincoln for $850,000 we are planning to spend nearly $1.9 million to establish a presence in Omaha.

Didn’t Schrock Already Have an Omaha Location?

Schrock Innovations entered Omaha in 2004 with a small 1,500 sq foot expansion office on 84th and Maple Street. We had a radio show on the lightly listened to KOMJ Magic 590 AM, and we managed to generate a profitable first year of operation with a light staff and a lot of small-ticket repair work.

In 2006, Magic 590 was flipped to an all-sports format and re-branded as Big Sports 590. We lost our radio show, and with it the only means of marketing that we had cultivated in Omaha.

We tried to move to KKAR 1290, but after 6 months of radio we only had 2 new customers to show for it. KFAB did not have any available air slots, so we cut our losses and killed the Omaha radio show.

From a financial perspective we should have rolled up the Omaha physical location right then and there. From a moral perspective the right thing to do was to keep the store open to service the hundreds of warranties we had sold on new Modular PCs.

We tried to hedge our losses by locating our web development staff in Omaha and moving the location to a lower rent area on 93rd and Maple.

Our lease on that location expired in October of 2009, and our landlord had the opportunity to lease to a longer term tenant. I was not willing to sign a long-term lease in that space, so we rolled up the location in November 2009 and went to 100% mobile service in Omaha.

What is Going to Be Different This Time?

In a word, everything. The most basic barometer is money and the #1 reason our first entry into Omaha didn’t become a permanent fixture was capitalization.

On our original expedition into Omaha we spent just under $200,000 and managed to cross break even on all start-up costs by mid 2007. When we lost the radio show we did not have the time to develop and cultivate a new advertising medium while maintaining basic services.

This time we are entering the market with a few more factors on our side. First, we are capitalized. We are not borrowing one single penny to make this happen in Omaha.

Second, we have a primary and a secondary advertising medium developed and ready to launch. One model should be enough to gain penetration rapidly, but if it fails or falls short, we have a backup plan that we have been testing successfully in Lincoln for months.

Third, we have a staffing plan that will allow us to add new people to our Lincoln Service Center and train them there and then move some of our existing employees into the new Omaha Service Center to assist and train our new Omaha staff. This “culture graft” will help us maintain our normal service-focused edge as we bring in new people who may have been trained as technicians instead of service providers in the past.

When and Where Will it Be Opening?

We have narrowed our possible locations down to two possibilities – Village Point Mall at 168th and West Dodge Road, and The Shoppes at Legacy at 184th and West Center.

We are targeting September, 2010 as the opening date for the Service Center.

I will have more updates as we lock things in, but all in all this has been a VERY busy month and should be an interesting 4th quarter as well 🙂

This morning I was a guest on the Channel 10/11 News morning show. We did two, three minute segments. You can watch the complete interview about the iPad below.

We hit on some of the high points of the device, talked about its limitations, and whether or not it is a “must have” for students in school right now.

While it is certainly nothing new, yet another threat to your email security is floating around the internet.

This email made it through our formidable spam filters (as well as through Google’s filters) to find its way to my inbox.

Dear Customer,

This e-mail was send by schrockinnovations.com to notify you that we have temporanly prevented access to your account.

We have reasons to beleive that your account may have been accessed by someone else.

Please click on the following link (or copy & paste it into your web browser):

http://limpadoralimptec.com.br/instructions.exe

(C) schrockinnovations.com

As usual, the message is plagued with misspellings and the link (removed in my example) to the instructions.exe file would have attempted to infect my computer.

As a general rule, email system administrators do not send broadcast emails to users notifying them of an intrusion.

Does your PC freeze often, especially when you start or shutdown your computer, or try to launch an application?

If you answered yes, then to rectify the situation you need to first identify the culprit. Typically, a computer freezes when one or more running processes, such as ipssvc.exe, ekrn.exe, or msmpeng.exe, report high CPU usage.

Perform the following steps to identify the process that is eating into your system’s resources:

I just picked up my 32 GB iPad from Best Buy (after my online order placed on March 27th was delayed until April 12) and I am not impressed.

As usual iTunes bottlenecks the type of files I can sync with my iPad, Apple dictatorially controls what apps I can have, and I can’t customize the unit in any meaningful way.

It is time to jailbreak this thing. Here’s how and why.

Encountering a computer error can be a frustrating experience, especially if you are unaware of its cause or the steps you need to follow to troubleshoot it. One of the most common Windows errors that irritate computer users are DLL errors.

So, what are DLL errors anyway and how does one deal with them?

DLL files are a group of files that contain codes that allow them to perform one or more specific functions, such as providing graphical user interface for applications or controlling dialog boxes. A DLL file can be used by multiple applications simultaneously.

This brings us to the next question – Why are DLL errors so common? Well, there are many reasons for a DLL error, but the main reason for their frequent occurrence is attributed to the fact that these files are present in huge numbers on all Windows PCs.

One of the most common types of DLL errors are “missing or not found” DLL errors. Examples of common “missing or not found” DLL error messages are shared below: