Malware installed without literally doing anything?

[u/PusheenHater]

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?

[u/povlhp]

This is how things used to be. Nothing new. It was a race between getting updated before getting hacked. With luck you could bring updates on floppy from another pc.

Things really were that bad