as a former Avast tech support contractor, I witnessed this marketing shift from offering preventable security, to scareware tactics. I felt bad when their sales transferred a poor old lady who paid almost 200 dollars for a computer cleanup because she had some toolbars and was led to believe her PC was seriously compromised. Avast total support was a scam and it took me 2 years to realize and move away from it.
I think most data leaks in company's are not the result of hackers but the company itself illegally selling your data and pretending they were hacked to protect themselves from the law.
I've been working in IT just over 9 years now. One thing I've noticed on several occasions, is that 9 years ago viruses were much more plentiful. Back on windows 7 we would often hear about end users getting their machine infected and we'd have to resolve. It never happens anymore, at least for me. The main way we get attacked now is ungodly amounts of phishing
Yeah but something tells me the viruses didn't go extinct. They likely go dormant or put in storage containers.... Likely ready to be used wherever there's a war going to happen.
@@jesusofbullets Because it's because of the human that security measures have to be sacrificed fore the sake of convenience. Atleast that usually seems to be the case. Oh and old fashioned stupidity ofcourse.
As someone who works in a computing repair store, it seems that the biggest threat nowadays to the average computer user is phishing and scams. I see so many people getting tricked by phishing emails or fake websites and letting scammers have access to their computers. It’s something that the technically inclined people out there never even think about or realize, but it’s a HUGE problem and it makes me sad how common it is and how many people fall for it and end up losing thousands of dollars.
I work for an ISP, and I've definitely ran into an uptick on calls about ransomware recently. It's definitely mostly older people, and even with that uptick, it's still a very small minority.
@@howardmueller1535 I work in healthcare and yeah, unfortunately people still fall for it--mainly elderly and people with intellectual disabilities. I actually just had an individual fall for a scam, but thankfully he didn't have direct access to any debit cards because his guardian manages it for him, otherwise he would have sent money to a scammer for a package he never would have received because he believed that person was being geniune (it was right before Christmas when this happened).
Yea its not even everyday user. These phising mails are good. I work as a sw engineer in the medical device industry. One day I got a mail from my manager, stating he had finished my performance review and I shall have a look at it so we can discuss it in the next meeting. The sender was the name of my manager as usual. I click on the link and it turns out it was a huge phisihing bait from the IT department of my company. I "failed" the test and got send a training for cyber security/phising lmao. However, I never thought I get tricked with something like this. I work with computers since Im 11 years old, have a masters in computer science and do programming stuff everyday. But there they got me. Wouldnt have expected such an elobarte fish, especially since it was performance review time and the mail did fit perfectly. So always be aware. Its not only older people. Everyone can be affected by phising and being overconfident can be your (at least it was mine) grave :)
nowadays, anti-virus software feels like virus software doesn't solve problems, just makes stuff up to nag you about edit: OMG THONKS 4 DEAR LIKE I LOVE LIKES ON MY EWTUBE COMMENT SO MUCH SO MUCH
They’re still around but anti virus protection on computers has gotten better. People have also gotten more tech savvy as more and more people have technology incorporated into their daily lives
Not just that, but hackers have shifted more towards companies. There's much more money in getting some ransomware on a large company or critical infrastructure than it is to collect or scam your average household
I would definitely not say antivirus software has gotten "really good". It's more like internet is now regulated. Also just a handful of companies own the web.
i'm a white hat hacker and i work with pentesting and bug bounting, can confidently say that's not true. the way antiviruses work is by putting things into quarantine and check the way they act to see if it matches malicious activity in their database, that's why people simply use windows defender nowadays, because their database is simply the largest. About viruses now, the amount of them that are actually caught are minimal, because nowadays viruses are coded to "mutate" themselves every time a new computer is infected, where they change parts of their code so that they are unrecognizable.
I remember being like 9 or 10 and getting a "FBI virus" on my computer. Said the police would show up at my house in 24 hours if I didn't pay them, locked my computer, AND took a screenshot of my face. The way I cried to my parents. Geek Squad was really helpful
Feel like it's all just false emails now, that too many people trust and get cheated by. Why all major mail services and software should use AI to automatically delete ll the false emails, no move them to junk, delete them, and just like with hackers, if somebody manages to get past the AI, it needs more training, and so on forever.
Bro same😂😂 I tried to download GTA san Andreas for free and that message popped up saying I was watching underaged shit and police will arrive in two days. I nearly jumped of a bridge.
@@mukzz3381 nooo literally same. My aunt was like...whatever you've been watching you gotta stop. Lady I'm 9 just trying to download the sims 3 packs and IMVU for free
I write old-fashioned and often harmless viruses for fun and distribute them to my friends (at least those who know how to use virtual machines), but one of my friends who was overly confident in the antivirus software he uses decided that my "homemade" virus can't get past its protection anyway, so he ran it without a virtual machine. In short, his computer got infected and it took me a week to write the program that repairs the damage caused by the virus I wrote in 2 hours. So yeah antivirus softwares are good and all but the best protection is common sense.
@@jmtradbr Same, I did that to one of our lab computers in IT. When one of my classmates used it for demo to fix a computer, he was scratching his head so hard that whenever he opened the PC, it immediately shutdowns again and again and again. I was laughing so far the instructor discovered I was the culprint to it and had to undone it myself so the other classmate of mine who know nothing about such pranks could proceed, haha.
@@vojtechtomes6231 yeah, I once sent a dark comet to my friend and he was rejecting any links/files I tried to give him for half a year, even though they were viral none (it was related to Minecraft, probably)
One of the biggest changes to people's PCs is that the default user no longer has full administrative control to the system. It became that much harder for a virus to infect a system.
True. I also think that it turned out to be easier for scammers to just do social engineering, rather than create a virus or malware that can work around modern computera
But at the same time there is a backdoor in Windows systems, sort of hyperuser that hackers often exploit. You are not a true administrator even when using administrator account.
@@bugzykek I'm familiar with that. Something glitched my authority permissions subprocess and I lost access to random normal files. I tried using the super admin on my own to check what was up before eventually tech support got to high enough a level to tell me to restart that subprocess. I knew of the menus involved to do that, but didn't trust myself to not break my computer. It took them a lot of thinking on their side to work out what it must be related to. 95% of their instructions were straight up impossible as infected files would show literally nothing in the permissions/security tabs of the file properties.
Viruses are still extremely common. I work at Geek Squad and I'd say a quarter of our clients are coming in with some of the most insane viruses you've ever seen, it's mostly an issue with seniors.
I totally thought this video was sponsored, that you at suddently would say "If you want to be safe from this use this". Love that you made this type of video without any sponsors!
@@prezidenttrump5171 Monetization is a thing though? I have an adblock, so I don't know if it had an ad, but if it doesn't then that's a choice he made, considering that I'm certain this type of content qualifies.
and you can't do a damn thing, even just browse the internet while copying files because it would eat up all the disk read and write cycles. ahhh good times men
I was actually wondering a few weeks ago about viruses and what happened to them. Back when I was a tween/teen I used to get viruses on my desktop and laptop computers all the time. Most of the viruses came from those scareware/adware pop-ups which I fell for. So that was quite a time to be alive. I think the reason viruses are so rare these days is because everyone's using their phones now which have better security systems in place, websites have started filtering and cleaning up their ads, and people overall have gotten more computer literate over the years.
they still exist but people think they are not an issue even though they still exist it's just that hackers are not going after people like you anymore they are going after businesses and such for money
My biggest concern nowadays isn't even the virus, but the lack of privacy (or spyware)... And when it is virus, are those suckers that keeps silently in their corner "watching" everything you do and snitch to nefarious hackers.
I can still recall the the feelings of absolute dread and fear when getting those "threat has been detected" alerts as a kid. Having to call up a close family friend that knew about computers and be walked through the steps of isolating the virus in a "chest", even installing a certain program so he could remotely take control of my computer. I don't even remember the last time I got a virus, but to this day I'm still too scared to go on any sites that let you watch stuff for free and whenever my browser or adblock gives me a warning about a site that might be sketchy I get out of there as fast as possible lol
What is not mentioned is how viruses were easily spread with Java and Flash. With Flash gone and Java (not to be confused with just Javascript) not common on most computers, those exploits disappeared, too.
Well the whole video is VERY simplified. People also didn't stop using Internet Explorer and switched to Chrome but we all switched to Mozilla Firefox. Chrome came wayyyy later. Before that you even had Opera which was even Shareware for a while i think. This video didn't even mention the infamous Win32Blaster Worm or the Sony BMG Rootkit.
This video neglects to mention a couple important details: the shift to mobile. With operating systems operating as a secure sandbox, it's much harder to get a virus on iPhone or android (including outright blocking of installing software outside of the approved app store). As well as how most people's online activity has shifted away from email and browsers, instead using apps on the phone. A side note though, most corporate data leaks aren't from simple viruses, but phishing schemes and social engineering to get log ins.
I feel like part of it is also the targeting, it's much more lucrative to target a data center rather than Steve's dying laptop that only has photos of his new house on it, hold it for ransom and Steve will probably just factory reset rather than go through the hassle of paying for the key. A giant data center can't do that. They have backups yes but due to their sheer size, it would be impossible to properly back up everything. They have to pay whatever the price is or risk everything
I had one that would move your icons every time the mouse cursor got near it. I found it amusing. Had to use the keyboard to access the anti-virus software to remove it.
I remember using avast in the 2000s and it was LOUD 😂 🤖: AVAST VIRUS DATABASE HAS BEEN UPDATED And when it detects a virus it literally plays emergency siren sound 🚨🚨🚨
Honestly, one of the biggest steps forward in computers was Microsoft Defender being a default antivirus software in Windows computers, while also being a GOOD option. There's basically not a need for any of the paid external options anymore since Windows, even non-activated, comes with its own AV by default while regularly running scans in the background during idle periods. Additionally, email services generally virus scan emails that run through their servers, making it much harder to pass a virus through email.
Windows Vista actually shipped with Windows Defender, but it only became good in recent years. As much as I love Vista, Windows Defender was junk. I still prefer other programs over it, but it's actually competent now at least.
fun fact, if you somewhat know what you re doing and you have a working brain.exe... you dont need any antivirus at all. especially for a simple home user pc. I dont even use windows defender anymore, i dont even have it installed because i use custom windows installations i take out stuff like windows defender of the installation itself so the os get even more clean and slim. And my systems never ran that smooth and issue free like they do in those years. Any sort of anti virus to me has more or less no purpose these days because all they really do is slow down and give you a false sense of security. any REAL THREAT that WANTS to enter your system WILL enter your system no matter if you have an anti virus or not. and all of the stuff the AV might eventually help? against...you can straight up avoid with brain.exe any AV is like a last resort backup net for people turning off their brain. thats it. but it doesnt protect against anything actually dangerous whatsoever, and if you instead use your system with a brain and you couple the fact that you re not a worthwhile target anyways because you re just a boring average normal person, doing some games, having average documents of your unpaid bills or some porn or whatever, you can just get rid of it alltogether aswell. Also an AV does not prevent something to enter. it might detect it once its allready there. But heres the thing: something like backups exist, and reinstalling windows with some m.2 drives is a matter of minutes. i could rebuild my OS from scratch now without really losing stuff and i ll have a working system again in like 5-10 minutes. Its simply not even worth it messing with an AV once your pc is allready fucked...just reinstall everything and you re good to go and its faster anyways
@@davidhubbard8353the last virus I got was back in 2013. My computer had stopped working, so my big sis would let me use her laptop on the weekends to get any online work done. But of course the main thing l used it for was p0rn 😂 So one Saturday I'm sitting there doing my thing on some shady site, when all of a sudden the Webcam turns on...and l see ME with my johnson in my hand 😢 So I immediately run out of camera view, but then a message appears and says that the FBI had locked my laptop for doing "illegal online activities", and I'd need to send 500 bucks to the site on the screen to unlock it 😢 So immediately try to reboot it, but soon as it did, the Webcam would turn on and the message would pop up, so l thought my sis was going to kill me 😢 l kept restarting over and over, and eventually I was able to get to System Restore before the Webcam turned on, and that fixed the issue. I immediately downloaded AVG virus protection and havnt seen one since. 😅
Around Y2K, Microsoft pushed VB-script very strongly. By default, VB-script received as attachment in the then extremely popular Outlook Express mail client was executed automatically. Causing the very wide spread of virusses such as I Love You. In 2004, Firefox rose from the ashes of Netscape,. It quickly gained many users abandoning IE. It was no earlier than 2008 that Chrome was introduced.
I'm kinda surprised that the windows xp worm wasn't mentioned in the history of the viruses. You could get infected by that without doing anything other than just connect to the internet
I haven't heard from virus in years. A friend asked me to check if they have viruses, because their PC is super slow and takes forever to do whatever and it just freezes up. Turns out he was running 3 different antivirus software apps and all was doing real time searches at once. I just removed the software and his home PC was normal again.😅
Surprisingly, I managed to dodge all of the late 90’s and early 00’s viruses. Considering that I lived on “warez” sites, it’s shocking I never got hit with anything.
I became responsible for curing the family PCs since I was in middle school. Though to be honest, I was usually the one infecting then as well heh. My family had only gotten their first PC in 2001, so I had to figure it out from a young age. As a software engineer over a decade later, I look back to the standards of the time and ask “what were they THINKING?” I have to give my retiring predecessors some slack, because the internet (and later the web) was running circles around them in terms of innovation. They probably couldn’t cover all angles. I am disappointed that Microsoft was so careless about it at the time. They seemed to assume all their individual users were technically inclined, when in reality it was usually the opposite, and the technically-inclined users were using Apple as a “workhorse that just works” and not a cheaper machine for work or school. Once basic sandboxing standards were set in place, and firewalls were turned on by default (they were turned off by default even in Windows XP), things got much better. The unfortunate thing is that infecting individual computers isn’t very useful to hackers with real nefarious intent. Phishing individual passwords is nothing when you can go for the whales at big corporations with a LOT of credit card numbers on file. That’s what you gotta worry about: Can you trust the companies you give your financial and personal data to keep it in the tightest of vaults?
And the most technically-inclined would run Linux or other relatively obscure OS systems because of the same aspects as Apple just with more security due to the fact nobody would bother with a Linux only virus.
Botnets still seem insanely valuable, no? Why build a server farm when you can just steal computing power from thousands to millions of oblivious people?
Most operating systems are also way more locked down now. Even trying to make some changes yourself can be very cumbersome. Older veesions of windows used to allow you mostly free reign and viruses would exploit that. Now it feels like every other thing requires administrative permission or you're denied access specifically to protect essential aspects. It takes a more savvy program to bypass it all than it used to.
Reminded me of that time when I was a kid with my first PC. The computer was getting slower and slower every day, so my dad called his friend who was an IT guy. First thing he did was install an antivirus and run a scan - I remember how shocked I was when it said we have a few thousand threats found on the machine 🤣
What I certainly don't miss is having to go to the houses of friends and relatives to clean up their PCs after they got infected. Spending hours finding and deleting bad files and registry keys or even reinstalling the entire OS was never a good time and they always seemed to get a little frustrated at how long it took even if I explained upfront that it would take awhile.
Yes sitting there formatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows was painful. Having to wait for the service packs. And you can't just leave because you know there's no chance they'll be able to handle installing Graphics drivers sound driver Etc. And don't even get me started on the people who don't have their 'dell disks' and then we would have to find these things by other means
The good old days of Kazaa and Limewire. Easy legal availability of digital media has also decreased viral transmission rates. P2P programs were a huge vector for contagion which still happens nowadays with protocols like Bittorrent
Yeah. RU-vid and other streaming sites like it have been huge in reducing virus activity. Also ad blockers played a big part since dodgy ads were a big vector as well
@@lordsiomai as long as we have some common sense , we can torrent safely . But I guess most people don't want to use their brains and torrent from shady sources.
@@indrajith2460 unfortunately, a lot of people aren't very computer literate. I've been using torrents for over a decade now, started when I was a kid and obviously couldn't afford any games or other content, and it didn't take me long to learn that I shouldn't download what I want from dodgy websites. Check, check, check again, and verify. It applies to everything on the internet, really.
Yep, the only time I ever had a totally bricked computer, it was from my nephew coming over and using Kazaa and Limewire and stuff to download porn. Usually I would just clean up the computer after he left, but once it actually wrecked my whole system, he wasn't allowed on our computer anymore. I couldn't care less if you wanna look at boobs, but I'm not putting out a thousand dollars for it, kiddo. :p
Been working in the “higher education “ sector of IT for a couple of years now. 98% of the time it is students who visited an inappropriate site on a browser and clicked to allow notifications. I block the website in the browser and run a quick virus scan to be extra safe. P.S. Student issues are less than 1% of the work we do
The main thing that made our computers vulnerable back then, we use to download affected softwares online, and also downloading music online came with viruses. Spotify, Netflix played a big role
looooooool Spotify They don't have everything, plus songs often gets deleted or grayed out there, plus we are forced to pay if we don't want constant ads every 1 minutes Spotify is not a replacement for music
I pirate every damn on the Internet and I have no virus... In fact, I have hacktools (malwares) like KMS Pico intentionally installed and I still have no virus on my pc... Spotify and Netflix have no role in anything besides ripping you off your money... You can call me an a$$hole for pirating.. Agreed!
I get multiple virus detections a month, but I am all over the place. because of the nature of my profession. I think it was 1989 when I was a computer tech at our community college when the computer center got hit by our first virus. the school went into panic mode and they even thought of shutting down for a few days until we got a handle on it. After all these years, I do not even remember what virus it was. I don't even know when my virus scanner stops something unless I look at the log, which I do at least once a month.
Starting from around the year 2005 the scene slowly began to die, more people were leaving than joining. Eventually nearly everyone was gone apart from 10 or so ex-virus writers who still hang out in #virus on irc. Some died, some got bored, some were arrested.. so many reasons. But it's not game over just yet - there's a small virus writing scene who focus on Linux.
I used to make computer viruses between 2000-2010. In general I would say the barrier to entry is simply higher today. The exploits are less numerous, plus windows itself has user access control, which it didn't back in the day. That meant that a computer virus pretty much always had administrator rights back then. Nowdays, if you want to make "hacking" worth your time, it means you have to take a long time finding obscure exploits in various software like webserver software and what have you. This is always an immense task and requires the "hacker" to be actually talented. Reverse engineering apps is an immense pain in the ass and definitely not everybody can do it. Anybody can write a computer program, software engineering is fairly simple by comparison. All you do is just follow the industry standards, you barely have to think. Whereas reverse engineering requires a great deal of attention AND creativity most of all.
Exactly. MS could have made Windows more secure back then for sure, but they knew they were making an OS for the average idiot, and requiring a user to have to "think" about things like user privileges, root access, having control over executables and system services, or firewall setup and the like was just right out of the question. They knew advanced users would do that on their own and they didn't want to have to spend the time and money to make it a standard. The bar has been raised now due to greater consumer expectations and they can't get away with being so lazy anymore. These days, that means finding service vulnerabilities and exploits that don't get immediately patched out and requires you to be several steps ahead and isn't something that just anyone can do. If you're good enough to do that, you're probably good enough to be making money as a legit software engineer and don't have time to be playing around just to prove a point. Although there is still money to be made if you can find those exploits and sell the info to developers.
Writing a virus that can get through an antivirus (and consistently updating it) is not worth it when you can just text people "Your UPS package is delayed, we need you to login and enter your payment information".
The worst viruses I got were during win95 pentium era. After that, I literally never had any computer virus ever, despite downloading from aplenty shady websites.
My last experiences with viruses involved Michaelangelo and Stoned. And I don't mean during the DOS days. In 2017, I worked at a PC service shop. A customer brought in a large box of 5.25" and 3.5" floppies. 108 altogether. Being a hoarder of PC tech, I had a 5.25"/3.5" combo drive and bought a USB FDD adaptor. During the process, the AV software found a few Michaelangelo and Stoned viruses. Once complete, we put it on a complimentary 1GB flash drive. I wonder if either of those viruses would affect today's PCs
I can't really confirm that I ever gotten a computer virus. Back in the day if you had any sort of problem in your computer the default was: Let's format and reinstall, they didn't even try to remove a virus or anything else. I generally say that living in that somewhat "war age" that we lived made us troopers. We didn't have google, youtube and foruns on the internet to solve our problems. We relied on friends and just going after and trying to solve the problem. Many problems were tackled by asking at school for that "geek" friend and latter trying it at home. Nowadays everything is online and google is our main source of search, so if a website is suspect google either will warn you or will not show you. Also you'd have to download something and most stuff we do is online so the website itself tries to protect you, because it's protecting itself. Today we are more concerned with date leakeage and ramsonware, and our IT company usually says not to click a link sent by e-mail and always check what comes after the @. If it's not the official domain or if it was some wierd letters just ignore it and mark it as spam. Here in Brazil I feel they mostly try to scam you through SMS, today for SMS is something to be ignored, which is stupid because I had an unpaid electric bill and the company instead of sending me an e-mail, the same company that sends me the bill per e-mail, sent an SMS. OF COURSE I though it was a scam! When I got suspicious and went after I realised I forgot to pay a bill.
i got really lucky once because a "friend" tried sending one to me, but windows was too good. the program ran, but couldn't encrypt files for whatever godly reason. so i had a program asking me for money even though it could do nothing. ran safe mode, uninstalled that bitch and it's correspodning files and the problem was no more. it did cause me a bit of a back pain because i still opted to install a fresh windows after that so all that backing up and stuff.. but better safe than sorry
About 15 - 20 years ago I bought a laptop to do small tasks, play games and because it was cool. After the Norton antivirus free trial period expired the computer sent me a notice that my computer was in danger and that I needed to get a Norton subscription to protect it... EVERY 15 MOTHER E'FIN MINUTES!!!! If I would turn my laptop off the "reminder" would stack and upon reboot I would have to cycle through ALL of the ones I had missed during the downtime. It was as annoying as any virus I could have caught without it (spoiler: I never got a virus). That was the last time I EVER bought a computer so "Thank You Norton" for ruining them for me.
Honestly I think it's maybe even a social thing. Nowadays personal computers (desktops, laptops, phones etc) have really good default security on them. Like, you can still get viruses, or hacked and things like that but the standard security is enough to handle most easy threats without much user input. As such, I think it takes enough effort to have to create a virus that targets individuals, and the reward isn't good enough that people just stopped. Plus, I think that where you could spend a week or so writing code that can infect people's devices and get their info, alternatively you could just spend a week automatically sending out phishing emails, and for much less effort likely have a better success rate if you target enough people. Why go to the effort when you can just convince someone to give you their password?
I remember ditching AVG & Avast anti virus software back when Windows 8 was released as it had this improve windows defender AV software built in already. Very much appreciated and ate less resources on my PC. My peak AV software usage was when I was in windows 7. Thats like 10-11 yrs ago.
People only go to a few large websites these days that are low risk in the way of viruses. The biggest issue is these big companies want data from cookies and anything they can glean in the way of data. They claim that they value your privacy, but all the ads are targeted to what you've been researching to buy.
I was thinking about this the other day since I'm in a security course and realized it probably has a lot to do with incentives - virus development is expensive, so you have to justify that expense. So viruses disappeared and trojans and ransomware reign supreme, because they actually make money.
Loved seeing the Touhou virus at 9:46, truly one of the viruses of all time (for those that don't know, it forced you to 1CC Undefined Fantastic Object to get your data back... so in other words it's probably best to cut your losses)
@Fully Suave 1 credit clear, meaning you beat all six stages of the game without having to use a continue. The name originates from arcade games which required you to put in more coins (credits) to continue after a death
We have like 1 or 2 antivirus reports a month for like 200 users. 1 out of 10 is usually a real cryptolocker so we end up formatting the pc more for legal concerns than anything (you knew we had a virus and you didn't do anything kind of thing). The vast majority of those viruses come from phishing email attachments and are cryptolockers. For home you can do fine without an antivirus if you know how to use a computer, but for business or your grandpa a protection is still required.
I work for Geek Squad as a Consultation Agent. It’s crazy how many of clients I interact with are victims of scammers that remote into their PC with AnyDesk, or in rarer cases TeamViewer. I even pretty frequently see clients come in who have been scammed by people pretending to be Geek Squad. It’s truly incredible just how many people are victims of scammers and almost ALL of them are above 70. It’s sad, even though it makes sense. Most of the victims get $300-$1000 stolen from them but I’ve heard of people who’ve gotten literally $12,000 stolen from them.
Mostly Indian call center scammers. There are entire RU-vid channels dedicated to outing these scammers and shutting down their 'legitimate" call centers and helping their victims. I say "legitimate" because most of them have actual contracts as tech support and telemarketers with larger companies on one side, while scamming and stealing people's personal info on the other. It's truly disgusting what some of these scammers have done to people like that. You should check out Jim Browning, Kitboga, and Scammer Payback, as well as some of the others on RU-vid. If you talk to people who are victims, you should direct them to those channels and their respective sites, because they can sometimes help them recover their money.
While computer viruses are still a threat to computer systems, advancements in cybersecurity technology have made it more difficult for viruses to spread and cause harm. Additionally, many people have become more educated about safe internet practices and the importance of antivirus software. However, cybercriminals are constantly evolving their tactics and creating new types of malware to exploit vulnerabilities, so it's important to remain vigilant and take proactive measures to protect your devices.
This video correctly points out internet explorer as the main vector of infection of computers but then jumps to chrome taking over the market, a 10 year jump. Meanwhile people were using Mozilla, Firefox, Opera and Safari. I remember Blaster very well. It never affected me because I used Opera back then, and you could about the shutdown sequence by typing "shutdown -a" in the command prompt. Then I visited a cousin which was affected by it and he became an Opera fan when I showed it to him and that blaster could not attack Opera.
I would definitely say that the reduction in piracy has a lot to do with it to. I know a few people who may not have been as tech savvy and accidentally got a virus when they were trying to download or stream something from the internet. Now that content is more accessible from reputable websites, this isn't as big of an issue
This is true. And also the fact that attackers are directing their efforts towards big companies where they can make way more money stealing intellectual property and customer data (credit cards and others).
Had a computer virus 6 years ago. And it was driving me mad, it completely messed up my laptop to the point, I couldn't even use it for watching youtube. It made my laptop slow af and sometime just freeze which resulted in the blue screen of death. Ironically, that was the point I got interested in understanding what malware, I started to learn how to malware analysis. After that I started search for viruses and malware to see how it would act. Just always update your Mac/Windows/Linux OS and use an Anti-Virus.
Good for you. That's what everyone who has any kind of livelihood that revolves around computers should do. Even having a basic knowledge of security goes a long way. Viruses usually run rampant on Windows machines because so many people don't want to bother to learn what they should do to prevent or remove them. It doesn't take a super-genius, just a little effort and willingness to learn.
Last virus I had was because a bad actor uploaded a bad minecraft mod update repository, as soon as the server updated the mod, it went out to every person who played on the server and stole the login token.
Well, I imagine that the maturity of the Internet along side reputable adult websites has been part of it. Awhile back I learned that a lot of viruses infected people's computers while they were looking for something spicy.
You do see them, they can happy quite few times, especially if you are someone who likes to search & explore various resources when looking for something specific I have no idea what type of habit you browse your internet, but if you only visit social sites, chances you will not encounter viruses
Oregon DMV got hacked and everyone with a drivers license got their info stolen. It's frustrating because I take precautions and still i get my info leaked. Luckily there is not much they can do with that info if you freeze credit bureau status but teach that millions of people
I still use Webroot to this day, but the only "viruses" my computer has found in the last 10 years were in old .exe files I know to be harmless as long as you're careful, and I had been wondering how I'd been so lucky. The last virus I've encountered that actually did any damage was in 2008. My laptop started acing funky, and it looked like someone was hacking it. I used a utility program to find an active file that looked suspicious and deleted it, then took the laptop to the university IT department. The next day, they told me as story about a virus created by the Russian mafia that they had used to create thousands of user accounts on computers in other countries so they could run hacking attempts from those computers, that had gone rogue and was no longer under their control. I have no idea if the story was true or not.
It's been a long time since I had a virus on my computer. Mainly it's because I avoid websites and links that appear to be sketchy. And I also keep my system updated, which is very important.
What about if your email is involved in a data breach. I like to sus out haveibeenpawned from time to time to see if my passwords or emails come up. It does explain how many dodgy emails I receive.
I moved from getting scared of computer viruses to getting scared of mobile viruses from 2016 - 2022 that now i ignore them and watch some xx in peace 😅
Same here. When I was a kid I infected our home computer. My father was on a business trip that day so I didn't have anybody to help me cure the PC. I felt so powerless and hopeless! I'm convinced I've got some kind of a trauma. Time to time I have a nightmares where my PC gets corrupted or infected. I fear it more than usual nightmares with monsters and stuff... So much more.
I'd also argue towards the second half of the 2000s, something happened in Windows land where viruses were most common: giving users the least privileges by default. Yes UAC was annoying to deal with, but it also prevented programs from simply gaining access to the entire machine unless you said it was OK to. Heck I recall there was a vulnerability where it was flagged as critical for Windows 2000 and XP, but not Vista because UAC mitigated it.
Believe me, they're still alive and well. It's just too easy to click on the fanciest looking download button to download some software from a sus amogus site. Or pirating music and films in exe format.
This. While watching the video I couldn't help but feel it was a tad misinformed or perhaps blindly optimistic as you can very well get malware during this day and age. If you're on Windows at least, one click on a wrong website, it could not even be for pirating, and you could end up with some nasty malware, mostly adware and spyware from what I can tell. My brother got popup ads on his laptop not too many years ago, and one time he was talking about lawn mowers to his friend, and his laptop seemed to have been listening in since he got a popup advertising some lawn mowing business. However i'm not here to advocate for people to get an antivirus, in fact i'd recommend you to stay far, far away from antiviruses as they're typically incredibly sketchy these days with selling data and stuff. Windows Security (formerly Windows Defender), the antivirus pre-bundled with Windows, deals with that just fine so long as you have good browsing habits (i.e. not going on random websites that either nobody knows about or isn't trusted). If you want extra but maybe overkill safety, you can frequently factory reset your pc (back up your files first of course) like I do, I do this when I click on a website I don't trust or there's anything remotely sketchy going on in my laptop, though to be fair 90% of the time it's probably just me overreacting to nothing (better safe than sorry I guess).
@@Tokuto-kun I did have to install some anti malware on my PC at one point, as sometimes Windows Defender won't cut it. But indeed, in most cases you're good with Windows Defender.
From what i've been told by different people is that it is REALLY difficult to hack into a computer without somehow tricking the human on the other end to run something or accidentally open themselves for an attack.
I've noticed that "computer viruses" have gone from relatively harmless (wiping your disk is still harmful, but you have rollback plan, right?) to pro-bono harm (crypto-lockers, personal identity theft and the like). Improvements on security also helped (systems limiting privileges, digitally signing programs, bundling antiviruses, prompting users before allowing access) also helped.
There's always been severe harm viruses out there since around the late 90's / early 2000's. Lots of silent password keyloggers, etc. I remember having to fix one friend's computer after she installed an infected version of a filesharing program (pretty sure it was iMesh), and ended up having a particularly nasty LSP virus hook itself into the windows TCP/IP protocol. It rerouted incoming and outgoing internet traffic through a premium rate dialer service that charged massive per minute connection fees. Because it overwrote the windows protocol, trying to remove the infection through normal means would wipe out the windows TCP/IP protocol completely and the computer would be unable to connect to the internet until you restored the quarantined virus, or did a full reformat and reinstall.
I remember getting the source code for the Natas virus way back in the '90s. It was a polymorphic encryption file and boot sector virus. Man that code was a piece of art. Unfortunately it did try to destroy the computer, but the code was a piece of art nonetheless.
Our home PC had to be formatted once due to virus intrusion, this was in the mid 2000s. I still remember that it was so bad that as soon as Windows would boot, it would flash the message in a dialougue box that something was wrong and couldn't proceed and had only "OK" button on it. Clicking on OK would lead to the same thing. We couldn't use our PC for few days until it was repaired.
the last virus i had was a weak-ass ransomware that did the classic screen lockout once i logged into my windows profile. i immediately found out that to get around the screen lockout was to create a new user profile, set them as the admin, and delete the ransomware files it was a perfect fix. all my files were saved, and the ransomware was removed.
If you download any cracked program or operating system via torrent etc, there is a subtantial chance that it contains some sort of malware. Some of them are pretty nasty (i.e. can steal your login credentials, financial credentials or can lock your important data). It isn't impossible to create an undetected malware.
Its astonishing to me how back in the XP era, you would tell your friends or family that you got a new computer and they would ask: "did you get good virus protection on it?" as if to ask, did your new car come with air in the tires? everyone expected quality virus control, and if you didnt have it... you were crazy. i kinda miss that era of technology.
Speaking of stolen private data .... Nowadays companies are doing it legally. That's why anti-trackers, spoofers and VPNs are all the rage. Now we need protection from corporations.
Yes, however, spoofers, if you're talking about the same thing I'm thinking of, only works for websites trying to track you, not installed software. VPNs offer less privacy than private browsing, more specifically, private browsing with no VPN is more private than normal browsing with VPN. Note that VPN with private browsing does not make you anonymous either. As for anti-trackers, you'll have to tell me what they are because that seems like a rather vague blanket term.
@@damnstupidoldidiot8776 anti-trackers are the solutions à-la do not track me, or similar. Browsers as Firefox have them embedded. As for spoofers, yes, there are many examples, but in this context I was thinking about the ones that can scramble the ads by sending fake data (location or others).
My dad still is pretty paranoid about viruses on his computer. And considering that he actually uses Microsoft and Internet Explorer, and considering the only way to save his phone would probably involve thermo-nuclear weaponry, he might be correct.
The problem with viruses is they only collect personal information (most times). Why do try and gather that information when all of that data is free already on the web. Or at the very least hackable from a company.
Nowadays, it's mostly phishing e-mails, or even text messages tell you that you received a money transfer and directing you to fake bank websites where you inadvertently give your online banking username and password.
Well yeah, you can’t hack without the black hoodie and red mood light, and make sure you’re wearing an Anonymous mask so the internet can’t see who you are. After that, you just have to break through the firewall, get into the mainframe, and… I’m in. *90s hacker music intensifies
@@PERTEKofficial LOL! Fun fact, i own the same motorcycle from the movie Hackers, same year, same colors when i got it but i modded TF out of it and now it's a Mad Max style desert survival bike. I started hacking way before black hoodies and furiously typing was a media meme, it was hilarious when 'hacker fever' hit lol! Too bad they went so haxploitation over the top silly with it, showing more realistic hacking would be way more entertaining and dramatic than the blur of meaningless nonsense that's the cinematic equivalent of jiggling keys to hold the attention of their fetus level smoothbrain viewers. When you shoot for the bottom of the barrel every random blind piss in the wind bullshit shot you take is a bullseye.
There's always viruses that will not be detected by many anti-virus programs because they keep updating themselves while the anti-virus programs are not awareof this new version of virus and so will not detect it. You can get virusses like that so easily just by clicking the wrong link or going onto a free wifi that is set up to collect all your data.
Just last week one of our employees' little brother downloaded some games that contained malware that hijacked all of his coookied sessions which the hacker was able to use to bypass 2FA and access our sensitive data. Employee was working from home. We are definitely not living in a "post computer virus world" unless you don't consider malware or ransomware viruses, but I agree that the motive now is to have malware be as least disruptive as possible so that it can steal data.
I think it’s less a virus free world and more that the target demographic has gotten smaller. You’re either going after old retirees, companies with a lot to lose in a ransom ware situation, or you’re a state backed hacker that’s making things designed for cyber warfare. The average computer user nowadays doesn’t really do things that risk a virus, and the few that do often times know what they are doing, and the risk is lower there too.
Yeah, I don't get this video. I never had this whole feeling that it's a thing of the past. Maybe it's because most of the internet now almost exclusively uses social media or something?
I remember years ago when me and my buddies were chatting on Skype one of them went "I think this is a virus, ima click on it". He "disconnected" shortly after.
A while back, I switched from PC to Mac, and all concerns about viruses immediately disappeared. I didn’t realize that Windows users eventually got to this nirvana state too, until this video caught my eye. Thanks for sharing!
@@need2connect - Pedantic much? My brothers prefer Linux over any other operating system, and I grew up on DOS computers. (My family got its first home computer in 1984, when I was 3 years old. I used to program the C64 for my brother so he could then play the games that I’d just programmed). Most people understand that “PC” is referring to a Windows computer; I’m sorry I wasn’t precise enough in my language for your tastes.
As Security gets better, Making viruses gets more expensive. No individual is that valuable. Now everyone's data is on the cloud, so they target the servers of the companies. Plus the best way to hack something now is to convince someone to give you the keys. (social engineering) (maybe I should wait for the video to end) 🤔 😅
The biggest changes are (a) Not having things just automatically run any script they come across (email clients, browsers, and most especially Adobe Reader or Flash plugins!) any more (b) They fixed prefetching and sandboxing. For several years, Adobe products especially, but also Microsoft, would just assume that your files were yours and if they saw a file then that meant you wanted to run any scripts in it, so they'd run it in the background. Meanwhile the browser speed wars led the browsers to prefetch all the links on a page so that if you clicked one it would already be loaded. Of course, as soon as it loaded in the background, the plugins would run whatever scripts were in it and you were already infected. Even if you never even clicked the link or downloaded the file at all. You never even had to go to a shady website. Anyone could take out an ad with a link to an infected file, and millions of computers would get infected just by seeing that ad somewhere (due to the automatic prefetching and execution). Nowadays, thankfully all that nonsense is gone. Haven't known anyone with an infected PC since the death of Adobe Reader and Flash.
Saw what you describe happen as recently as 2015 in a commercial setting. The company refused to block Flash from their enterprise and sure enough, one day some guy turned around for a few seconds and when he turned back the site he was reading ran something that put ransomeware on his screen. They were able to block his machine from the rest of the network before it transitioned the ransomeware everywhere else. Flash should have been EOL'd way before they finally did.
When my friends who do "Military Level IT Work" tell me that Windows Defender is better than virtually every aftermarket option, I take them at their word. And I also think another part of the factor has been a change of focus for the hackers who wrote viruses. Rather than write a virus that simply does random damage for shizzles, giggles, and notoriety, I think they are... Writing Spyware to try to capture credit card info and such, because MONEY is BETTER than "Fame."
the only traditional virus I've seen in last couple years are the anti virus like McAfee, where it slows down the pc, asks for payment like randomware and is annoying af to remove (had to use safe mode for it too)
Some major differences between back then and now is both browser and built-in OS security have massively improved. Additionally, ransomware has become much less common with worms, system trackers, and data mining viruses becoming the prevalent type of virus, these types of viruses try to be as hidden as possible so the end user isn't aware of their presence and are also often dorment until they are activated by a trigger of some kind, then they silently either take your data or use your PCs processing power while you're not using it for something like bit coin mining.
Windows Defender + Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool is enough. The problem nowadays is privacy. The operational sytem, browsers, websites are always tracking and spying you.
A *major* contributor to the decline of computer viruses that wasn't mentioned here was the replacement of Windows 9x and classic MacOS with Windows NT- and Unix-based operating systems. The old microcomputer operating systems had no concept of user accounts and no real security model at all. Windows 9x let every program, no matter how minor, run with root access to the system or close to it. DOS happily allowed programs to write to memory used by DOS itself. A random drive-by download on a modern computer running Windows NT, GNU/Linux, or OSX cannot just overwrite your partition table or corrupt memory used by the kernel; there are multiple layers of hardware and software defenses in the way, from CPU security rings to OS features like Linux's AppArmor.
Oh weird... i haven't owned a PC in 20 years but those first few seconds of the video with all the alerts overlapping gave me heart palpitations anyway. Geez the power of tech-PTSD.
Fun fact: I don't have antivirus on my computer because it really eats my already limited resources, but instead I remove Widows and charge it Linux. Running more secure operating system is a bless. Except of you do something stupid, like running an untrusted source as a root, everything should be okay.
