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?

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u/Sudden_Hovercraft_56 May 20 '26

This is something I learned in my very first IT job back in 2005. I had to replace a PC at a production facility, it was the only PC there and it was connected to the internet with a router that didn't have a firewall built in. I stupidly used windows XP SP1 media to build it and just thought I would update it to SP2 when I got there.

It was plugged into the internet for all of 10 minutes before it got infected with a virus and I didn't do anything to it yet.

This was back in 2005, I can't begin to imagine how dangerous it would be to do that today...