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The Virus that F***ed us all | Nostalgia Nerd

Nostalgia Nerd | April 13, 2026



Get Surfshark VPN at https://surfshark.deals/NostalgiaNerd – Enter promo code NostalgiaNerd for 83% off and 3 extra months FREE. Thanks to Surfshark for sponsoring ~ Malware, computer viruses and computer worms are rife. They’re so rife that antivirus software is now standard on Windows operating systems, and we’re routinely advised to upgrade to something more “secure”. But the origin of the computer virus, of computer worms may surprise you, because it wasn’t actually from a malevolent desire at all. It was in fact born out of intrigue and the desire to actually help productivity, rather than destroy it. In this episode I’m exploring the Creeper Worm; created by Bob Thomas and Ray Tomlinson back in the 70s. But alongside Creeper, I’m also looking at Reaper, and a slew of other computer worms that were created by Xerox in the early 80s. Because without Creeper, Reaper and Xerox, our computing landscape would look very different today.

⌚️Timeline⌚️
0:00-02:04 Introduction to Computer Viruses
02:04-03:17 Surfshark
03:17-04:23 CoreWar
04:23-06:37 ARPANET
06:37-09:20 Creeper
09:20-12:30 Reaper
12:30-15:29 Worm Origins
15:29-17:10 Xerox Problems
17:10-18:58 Viruses Everywhere
18:58-20:50 Closing
20:50-21:50 Credits

🔗Video Links🔗
CoreWar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxFYva9lNzU
Ray Tomlinson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhXk3wzemR4
Teletype printout: https://isc.sans.edu/diary/rss/27208

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Written by Nostalgia Nerd

Comments

This post currently has 25 comments.

  1. @Vector_Ze

    April 13, 2026 at 11:01 pm

    Oneline for 30 years and I've been lucky, I guess. Also generally practice safe computing.
    But the only virus I've had was the CIH, Chernobyl. It trashed my BIOS and I never got that PC working again.
    I got it by (ignorantly) downloading an exe that animated an image of Newt Gingrich depicted as a crawling turtle.

  2. @dakotanorth1640

    April 13, 2026 at 11:01 pm

    I never wrote a virus. But the "simple" 8 bit computers of the 1980s were popular when I started using them. I guess it was an early "IBM clone" where I wrote a simple text file, gave it an .EXE filetype, and when you ran it, the system would crash. Simple! Those were the days.
    Actually I had no idea what the result would be. I was a teenager and I was impressed.

  3. @brentdaloney6292

    April 13, 2026 at 11:01 pm

    I can't help but connect the idea discussed in this video of 'running an intensive task elsewhere in the world where a computer is idle' to Seti @ Home that allowed you to run the Seti program on your PC to receive specific work units to process in idle time. Seti @ Home then led to BOINC – or Berkley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing. BOINC used to allow you to work on Seti @ Home work units before this program was shutdown, but still allows you to crunch work units for dozens of other projects.

  4. @----.__

    April 13, 2026 at 11:01 pm

    First virus I experienced was Denzuko in 1990 after downloading games from BBS at a friends house and bringing them home on disks. It was on my father's PC so I panicked! Computers back then had DOS, windows wouldn't come out until a few years later, so I tried booting from a bootable 5.25" DOS floppy but the virus showed up again, and now the bootable disk was infected too. I had to ride to another friends house and make another bootable DOS disk there using sys a: to transfer the boot sector etc, except this time I write protected the disk with some tape. Rode back home and booted the PC and the virus didn't spread, then when I booted from the harddisk the virus was gone there too. It seems the remedy for Denzuko was simply booting from a write protected disk, which was great, because once everything was working again my father got home from work about 20 minutes later and I managed to avoid an evening with the belt, again.

  5. @Warg666

    April 13, 2026 at 11:01 pm

    I had W32@Nimda as norton claimed it would be able to stop it and it didn't, it was a damn nightmare trying to connect to the internet on dialup at the time an downloading the removal tool, as it kept booting me before I could get it downloaded 95% of the time, till I finally got it!~

  6. @johnthefactaddict3281

    April 13, 2026 at 11:01 pm

    ahh surf shark
    the service that could be rendered pointless by simply making region locking and rating illegal for any company that operates in any agreed nations, making it effectively impossible to function as a viable business method in agreed nations thereby ruining almost all revenue
    ok maybe it still makes sense for those who travel a lot, that insecure wifi bullshit won't really ever go away, but it would destroy 99% of VPN market cap as my streamys could be forced to provide equal prices and content as other countries, allowing me to have cheap access to Dr Who, which interests me but not enough to pay for more services

  7. @PessimistPirate

    April 13, 2026 at 11:01 pm

    Thank you so much for this documentary. I find this fascinating. I think we take the Internet for granted, and don’t appreciate the work and artistry, spanning decades, that went into putting a supercomputer in our pocket.

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