The Virus that F***ed us all | Nostalgia Nerd

⌚️Timeline⌚️
0:00-02:04 Introduction to Computer Viruses
02:04-03:17 Surfshark
03:17-04:23 CoreWar
04:23-06:37 ARPANET
06:37-09:20 Creeper
09:20-12:30 Reaper
12:30-15:29 Worm Origins
15:29-17:10 Xerox Problems
17:10-18:58 Viruses Everywhere
18:58-20:50 Closing
20:50-21:50 Credits

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[AlanPope]

I wrote a virus for the BBC Micro back in the day (~1989). It wasn't super harmful, but would move the !boot file and replace it with the virus loader. It would sit in sideways RAM, and every 32 times you hard-reset (ctrl+break) the BBC, it would print "hello world" in double-height dual-colour mode 7 text on boot. I had all my floppy disks confiscated at college as a result. Oopsie.

[jpaulc]

When I was really young I watched an Are You Afraid of the Dark episode about a computer virus and became fascinated with it. I remember typing "input virus" into the school library computer thinking it would actually create a virus. I still cringe about this.

[DustinRodriguez_]

When I was in high school I worked at a company that did mail processing. One of the services they offered was printing envelopes, folding big piles of direct mail material (junk mail and such), stuffing the envelopes, etc. This required them to get mailing lists of names and addresses from customers. They opted for a policy of telling customers "give it to us in absolutely any format whatsoever, and we'll figure it out". I was the one who got to 'figure it out'. By reusing a floppy in their systems and my home system, I discovered on my home system which had AV that the disk was infected with a virus... I want to say Nimda but I could be wrong. So I took an AV program to work and got to scanning the disks we had received from customers. I actually traced it back and found its origin. We had a write-protected floppy from a Radio Shack which was infected. And no disks from before that were infected, and all after it were infected. One problem. We had sent disks BACK to many of these customers. Any disk which had been used in those systems would have carried the infection. I went to the owners and told them this and said they should tell the customers... but they elected not to, fearing they'd be liable for cleanup costs. Bleh.

[Togepiification]

This reminds me of the story I heard from an HP engineer about the origin of the word "bug" in common language. They were debugging some huge physical computer with vacuum tubes back in the day, and trying to figure out why calculations were coming up wrong -- but only some of the time. They combed through the system until they found a moth, or some other type of "real bug" which was sometimes landing on the equipment and causing small short-circuits. They called the act of searching for the error "debugging" because of the bug they found. Probably a folk-tale, but I found it interesting.

[makethingsbetter]

I recall my pal and I reworking a virus to cause actual physical damage to a system, because we thought it would be fun to see if we could. Two things happened, we overloaded a circuit on the mother board by changing the result signals, and the floppy drive never stopped clicking, being told a disk was in the drive and then the screen was burnt by an image on small cluster of pixels always on bright white. Those days were fun, Paul, I miss you my friend. Have fun hacking the big space in the sky!

[razi_man]

Pretty much a computer virus that makes you go: "Aw, man."

[BeatboxNorwich]

The first 'Virus' we ever got turned out to be a dialer exploit on Win 98 and we got stung quite a large bill from Tuvalu. The PC never got infected though. Mother was pissed off at the phone bill while I sat and learnt PCs. The fooking thing didn't work on arrival so I had to take it to bits to fix it and I'm still doing it 24 years on. It's a good career path!

[CarletoGamesCGYT]

The guy that saw the "I'm the Creeper" message: "Creeper? Aww man!".

[presidentkiller]

I have a new rule that came (pun intended) from the infamous "Rule 34": if it exists, it can be weaponized.

Even if people back then didn't create Creeper, Reaper and Vampire, somebody somewhere would've created them eventually, just because they could and human curiosity is unlimited.

[jamesfigueroa]

Remembered The I love you virus and thinking no one would fell for this. Then half the office got the virus.

[jimlane]

Xerox had an amazing resource at their PARC facility. In addition to major contributions towards the creation of Ethernet, they also created the first true GUI interface, laser printer, fax machine and VCR technology. Sadly, Xerox was run by what we called "Toner Heads". People who came up through the ranks selling copiers, so if it didn't look or act like a copier they had no idea what to do with it. So, aside from the laser printer, those technologies ended up being either sold or just given away to other companies. **sigh** what might have been

[solomonthegrundit]

I’m 23, and for all you teens out there, I have one piece of advice. When you go somewhere for a few days that you know is gonna be one of the best things you’ll do for a while, (for example, for me, it was a school football tour with my mates, and a trip to Germany with my best friends), listen to 4 or 5 songs only, whenever you have the time in that trip. They don’t have to be songs that u love, and u can do other things while you’re listening.

What that did for me was, whenever I listened to those songs in the future, I had such nostalgia. Please, just try it.

[shawnl]

Holy smokes, this was a seriously high quality video. This is something I imagine that I would have watched on TechTV as a kid. You’ve got a whole vibe here.

[megarural]

8:36 "There was nothing malicious behind Creeper." Unintentionally hilarious line.

[ProlificInvention]

The first computer virus I got was ©1994-1995 on my stepdads 386 SX 25 with a turbo button. We were hooked to compuserve and I had downloaded an early visualization program and some other games like scorched earth mostly from BBS and Compuserve. Somewhere along the line I got a virus which was like a little worm that would go across the screen left to right, top to bottom "eating" the screen as it went and leaving behind solid black. After awhile I figured out it had affected all the software and my stepdad trashed it and all our 3.5 inch floppies as to not infect the new 486 dx33 we replaced it with.

[DanielMReck]

"RAYMOND!!"
Please keep up this informative and entertaining work. It is important to preserve this early computing history in a way that modern computer users understand.

[GeirEivindMork]

In the 80s my friend did a practical joke on his mother, who was a teacher. He installed a cascade virus emulator in the boot. So while she was working on one of her school related documents, the letters suddenly started to drop into the bottom of the screen. She was my class teacher so I knew her temperament very well, and could vividly imagine the reaction when he explained it. She wasn't amused, to say the least. Their computer costed over 7 000 usd in todays money, and I assume she was afraid he had broken it or something. He did write a harmless virus himself in assembly, but never spread it. I wasn't even given a copy, just shown it. I was not profilent in assembly at the time, so my try at the same was in turbo pascal which wasn't exactly equally impressive. Worked more like a self-replicating trojan.

[tolindaniel]

From the title, I thought this was going to be a story on the Blaster Worm from the early 'oughts. What a pleasant surprise, I hadn't heard this story before!

[josephfranzen]

Your channel is the only reason why I still have the YouTube App on my phones and tablets. The quality and depth of research that are presented in your videos are second to none. When I was stationed at Ft. Belivoir in 05, there’s a small display that has some of this older hardware on display, it was neat stuff.

[ideegeniali]

I programmed a DOS computer virus when i was 15. It spread on my classmates PCs uncatched. It copied itself from exe file to exe file as many viruses of the era. It was set to activate at a certain date and play a tune and display singalong words on screen and imped running infected exe files. I got calls from upset parents of classmates to my parents (no cell phones back then, just landline phones) that needed use PC for serious staff. If i were lazy i wouldn't have programmed antivirus and would have fucked many PCs. Thankfully i programmed self-distruct routine for any date after a different date and could instruct over the phone to change system date and run to get back clean exe files! I was expecting PCs to stay not operative for one week and then magically work again with nobody guessing who or why. I was not expecting calls at home first day! Had it a bug, it could have spread uncontrolled. Fortunately it had not bugs, worked ok, and all copies self-distructed themselves!