Head to to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code nostalgianerd ~ in 1992 a virus threat rose up that had the world panicking. That virus was called The Michelangelo virus, and it was poised to knock out 5 million computers around the world. Only John McAfee could save us.
โTimingsโ
00:00-06:00 Introduction
06:00-06:51 SqSp
06:51-20:02 Michelangelo Virus
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world , This Computer Virus Shook the World | Nostalgia Nerd , #Computer #Virus #Shook #World #Nostalgia #Nerd
, michelangelo virus,computer virus
First
Wrong voice. ๐ข
Nice stuff sir.
Back then: Beware! A highly sophisticated Virus could kill your system!
Today: Windows Update
You have to remember some companies won't admit they were hit by the virus, I was employed in I.T at a large UK company that employed 23,000 people and I remember when our server room had a virus, the next day it was "what virus"
kill me with the "sicth" pronunciation….
Great Video, i would like to see a Video about the Windows XP Boot Virus i had back in Time. I had have to buy a Floppy Disk to Patch my Windows XP, as i know it was a Parity Boot virus.
The next big thing after Michalangelo was the Chernobyl Virus not sure if it caused the widespread damage that it was predicted to. A friend of mine had their hard drive wiped but because it was fat32, it could be recovered.All my friends and myself got the virus during a lan party, but I noticed something was up (CIH would corrupt some Windows exes it tries to infect) and everyone there cleaned their systems with Norton AV. So most of us didn't have a big problem
Never forget when Michelangelo emptied one of my friends HDD and the virus came from me, got pirated Unreal game in 1998 and march 6. 1999 it happened.
So, the verdict is that media were over hyping the entire thing to get more attention and revenue?
*stares at the clickbaity title and thumbnail of this video
Oh, good. I realized when you mentioned Datacrime at the end why my memories of this event were so confused — I was actually remembering that hype fiasco.
Loved this video. Watched about 20 seconds before I realised this is a settle-down-with-a-cup-of-tea-and-watch type of video. Paused. Brewed up. Unpaused. Thank you for a great 20 minutes.
Toodeloo!
Wouldn't be first time McAfee was a virus propagater
Edit: wait what! I had no clue about the hanging stuff!
FYI The text headlines at about 11:47 are kind of hard to read – the space character isn't any wider than the normal character spacing and the words all blend together. Excellent video overall though, as always.
You didn't mentioned that cyber terror is now the biggest threat to national security that we know of.
Shut up ed.
And now look at McAfee. Mostly seen as "malware" in today's community (and every computer nerd removes it immediately if found pre-installed on their machine). Symantec (Norton) is probably the second, and probably followed by AVG. Luckily viruses are a bit of a thing of the past, but methods like phishing and other email-related attacks are popular, because we rely more on email and they've gotten quite clever with some of these tactics. So it's no longer not trying to make your computer not boot (as most modern OSes and computers have measures in place to protect the boot sector and file tables — and other critical areas that would prevent a computer booting if messed up or overwritten, and even more so some Oses have tools that will let you re-write the boot sector/boot loader should it get corrupt for any reason (like in Windows you can do this providing you can boot the computer to the recovery console).
Luckily nowadays we do have security firms whose primary goal is to search and address/fix security flaws and aren't necessarily in the business of selling security systems or anti-virus so things can be a bit more neutral when it comes to getting reliable information on new cyber threats, and many of these companies are not selling a product so much but more or less expertise.
My first encounter was the Antivirus built-in DOS 5.0 or 6.0 (can't remember which one) around 1992 or so, but I never really thought much to use it (it was more or less a supplemental program, and did not load automatically onboot-up, you had to start it yourself or add it to the boot sequence (autoexec.bat file).
In '92 the computer I was using gave the Michelangelo virus the ๐. Thank you Jack.T. for the Commodore 64 ! Take that Gates and your M$ DOS !
cool story.
I think some cut lines made their way into the subtitles btw.
Was the high pitched screaming whistle at 11:32 really necessary? Ended the video about 20 seconds into that.
I was actually waiting for the spinning green HDD lights to go solid RED ๐
Your characterization of the SUCCESSFUL avoidance of disaster is just as brainless as the people who say that Covid wasn't that bad.
Lockdowns saved lives. Popularizing AntiVirus saved computers.
You keep shit-talking the media – the media are shit, but you're doing the exact same thing as them.
When i was a kid i remember that virus were really powerful for the computers of the 90s… pure nostalgia.
Your voice is somehow different. ๐
The media was almost as untrustworthy back then as it is today. Almost.
Haha, I remember the Michelangelo virus frenzy. As a kid a turtle chopping up peoples data sprang to mind. It continued to cause damage (mostly on school computers) for at least 5 years after this where I grew up. Fortunately by then it was relatively easy to recover the data with specialized tools (where important) or simply format and reinstall everything. I remember finding a box of 1.44mb floppies infected with it somewhere in the late 90's when I first started working in IT. A few years later I remember laughing at the Anna Kournikova virus (worm) and how many people fell for it.
Anyone else remember the Punjabi virus?
My boss showed me an email attachment, a simple .txt file that when opened read something like:
"Congratulations, you have contracted the Punjabi virus!
Seeing as we are not so technologically advanced here in Punjab, please go to your command prompt and type the following:
C:>format C:/U
then press Y when prompted to delete all your data
Thank you for your cooperation."
You have to be one of the only people to say McAfee correctly, according to the man himself, RIP that crazy dude.
Ahh typical John McAfee… I recall one time when he uploaded a rather raunchy video about how to uninstall the software bearing his name, scantly-clad women and all. His death was officially ruled as a suicide, but many speculate that he was killed Epstein-style.
Good video, very interesting. Is it just me that gets unreasonably annoyed at McAfee being pronounced at MacCaffe. Same applies to McDonalds being pronounced MacDonalds
The one time I got hit with a boot sector virus, in 1995, I traced it to an IBM AntiVirus boot floppy. McAfee didn't kill himself.
Your narration is off-center. It's distracting.