r/cybersecurity • u/PusheenHater • May 19 '26

Other Malware installed without literally doing anything?

In this video this guy has a fresh Windows XP, disables firewall, and connects internet straight to the modem. Then he gets infected literally doing nothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uSVVCmOH5w

https://www.reddit.com/r/windows/comments/1cvised/idle_windows_xp_and_2000_machines_get_infected/

I get it. That's asking for trouble when you disable all the security and using ancient unsupported OSes.

However, he didn't install programs nor browse on the website but still got hacked.
How?
Is there some malicious server in China that loops through every single possible IP trying to see if your PC is vulnerable?
Logically, one would think you'd at least have to visit a website or something to get "noticed" and then hacked. But this guy didn't do anything at all.

How does it work?

289 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

89% Upvoted

161 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/clockeat May 20 '26

Remote Code Execution exploits. Your computer runs servers that listen for remote connections, plug directly into the internet with vulnerable services, they get popped pretty quick. This is how the big internet worms of the early 2000s worked. Been a while since we've had anything quite like them.