So grandpa had a computer problem. Turns out he installed one of the early locker trojans. He: “It’s all my own fault.” Family: “no grandpa, that were some ugly hackers”. So i removed the virus and checked the computer. Turns out it was his fault. He tried to watch “russian removed porn” and installed the virus in that process. He was like 85 and needed help washing himself. So IDK what his intentions were… The worst part: I had to keep a straight face and confirm the “hackers” therory. That secret will die with me. And now you.
I sat down on my first day at a new job as senior admin. My boss hadn’t even arrived yet and I had no access. Someone walks up and asks “Hey, a bunch of our files are garbled, can you take a look?”
Fourth infection in a year. That was the start of my worst job ever.
I’ve got an I LOVE YOU virus once on a Panasonic X700 fliphone. And, since it was an already old phone by that time, no one had the right tools to fix it anymore.
That phone was just like a Nokia, btw. Exact same Symbian OS, just with different media files and branding. (or at least, it looked like, so much so it hurt my young brain at the time)
There were photos of F1 cars on it by default. And a mini golf game that was awesome.
I was so sad when that phone got bricked. I don’t even tell you guys how I got that virus since it’s so embarrassing 😅
Also I almost got a ransomware on a freshly installed PC. I was lucky enough to notice something was wrong and I was able to stop it. Though, lots of folders have been infected (files have been created - the message that should have been displayed inside the virus’s windows I assume) and some files did get encrypted - but not deleted…
Downloaded a sketchy copy of some hard to find software some years ago. Once I tried to run it, I immediately noticed that the fans started spinning fast and everything was much slower. A quick ctrl + shift + esc and I saw that CPU usage was over 90% - Checking the detailed processes, I found the executable I tried to run and force-stopped it. It almost immediately restarted itself. Obviously, it already set up some other process to check for that process, so I started killing other processes with unfamiliar names until said process stopped restarting.
All good thus far, I went to check %appdata% and of course, there was a sketchy executable there that ran the keepalive process. Deleted it, searched all over for similarly named executables, everything seemed clear. Turned off the internet, rebooted the PC. Turned the internet back on and everything was still fine. I did notice later that I suffered some damage in the form of some files getting encrypted, which was why the CPU usage shot up in the first place - it was one of those ransomware type that, once finished, would no doubt sell the encryption password for a bitcoin deposit.
My other experience with malware was on Android. It’s amazing the lengths some FUCKING HARDWARE VENDORS will go in order to install adware on everything, right, Xiaomi, Samsung? Seriously, being forced to see an ad when you just want to use the fucking calculator? Fuck that shit.
Nothing major, just lots and lots of browser toolbars in the XP era and contact with some trojans (especially on torrents) that were thankfully caught by the antiviruses available back then.
Don’t remember how it happened but when I was a kid I got this virus on my laptop that would randomly open hundreds of Firefox tabs with this picture of Jeff the killer, with screaming audio at maximum volume and flashing black and white so fast it def would have killed an epileptic. Probably the most scared I’d ever been at that point. It also turned on my webcam light every time it happened, so somewhere on some filthy shut ins hard drive is a video of me at 12 years old throwing my laptop
Reminds me of that one time someone on some forum linked to a Jeff The Killer screamer site (basically the same thing you’ve described) and I clicked on it.
It initially didn’t even work, because I was using NoScript at the time… So I disabled NoScript temporarily and refreshed the page. It being about 2 in the morning and the speakers being tuned up didn’t help.
Wanted to duplicate my items in D2 (I was young). Instead the file I was instructed to try made me drop all of my items. Jokes on them though, my gear was trash at the time.
The one where they installed a remote access script on a workstation, waited for 6 months before spending all of 5 minutes bypassing a few layers of security products, gaining domain admin, and then exfiltrating 3 docs relating to a Russian dude’s trial from like 6 years prior.
Why the hell would one do that for THREE documents? I’d be exfiltrating everything out of there if I were them, if not for that Russian guy’s trial, at least for my curiosity and reading pleasure!
That one time back, from so long ago, when I was less techy than 2024 me, when everytime I opened my old Android phone, the browser would open up a Thai porn site. I went to the applications list on that old phone, and found an empty app with no icon and uninstalled it, and it stopped happening.
Had a fun experience in the back then times that my father’s computer became infected with one of those nineties style “funny guy” viruses. You know the ones, the ones that seem less interested in stealing money and doing damage and more interested in just fucking with you.
Of note:
if you tried to open Mozilla Firefox it’d autokill it and pop a message saying "use IE or else"
if you tried loading up Orkut (look, we were Brazilians in the early aughts. We all used Orkut) it’d kill your browser saying orkut was banned from that PC
it’d occasionally pop up messages with rude text seemingly at random
Got something installed in the earlier days of the web that would hijack the screen. I was able to identify the process in the task manager and delete it before it could replicate again
I don’t know if this applies directly, but in my early days of hosting a server for fun, I installed a telnet server because my phone didn’t have SSH at the time. I forgot to close it when i was done and someone got in and installed a password sniffer. This was a Slackware box, IIRC. My only indication that there was a problem was that the “.” & “…” directories didn’t appear from an “ls -Alf”. I pulled the network cable and booted to a boot image and discovered that many key system utilities were replaced with imposters that would mask that there was an intruder. The '“ps”, “ls” and other utils were symlinked to the “…” dir in /usr/local/lib.
I didn’t trust anything on that server and nuked it. Now, anything that’s internet facing is built from ansible and the config is stored in a repo and the repo is backed up on a drive that’s physically disconnected except when backing up. I’ve messed up the initrd from time to time and it’s usuall easier for me to reimage than try to fix it.
WinXP has had a long time on the shelf, it’s EOL so it’s not getting updated, and it’s still occasionally in use by businesses - when true, usually on critical infrastructure pieces that they can’t afford to take down to swap to a newer machine. People know this and so XP is a malware magnet. There are about a gorillion scripts loose in the wild that just find IP addresses at random - or not random - and hammer them with a bouquet of exploits, almost all of which will be easily fended off by a modern updated system, but several of which XP is probably vulnerable to.
So, the second you have a functioning network driver and complete your handshake with the internet, chances are good that somebody will be trying to sneak a script up your ass to corrupt the system. I’ve never seen it happen during install but if you’re exceptionally unlucky I could see how it could be possible.
XP didn’t have built-in virus protection, you had to install anti-virus once you got to the XP desktop. But, as I found out, during setup XP was talking to the Internet and vulnerable to infection.