1.5M views · May 12, 2024 · 20:35 · 0 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2024–2026
Eric Parker connects a fresh Windows XP machine to the internet in 2024 to see how quickly it gets infected with malware. He documents the dangers of running an unpatched legacy OS online.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN uses it as the counterpoint to a story where XP survived online, noting that a directly exposed XP machine is infected within minutes, though some critics say the setup is not representative of typical use.
“only takes 15 minutes before the first malware appears on it”HN comment, 2026
“only takes 15 minutes before the first malware appears on it”
Fresh XP on the internet gets malware in about 15 minutes
> There was a time when if you'd put a fresh XP install on the Internet you'd get 5-10 minutes until it would get restarted. This is still true, though 5-10 minutes is slightly pessimistic. Source: this video TL;DW - Guy installs XP and makes it internet accessible, only takes 15 minutes before the first malware appears on it.
“they mentioned explicitly several times that this mainly works because they put it in "the open internet" as a server”
AFAICT there was a single YouTube video that started this[0] and they mentioned explicitly several times that this mainly works because they put it in "the open internet" as a server. Disabling the firewall was the icing on the cake and yet that is all sites that reported this[1], no mention about how the computer was not behind, well, anything that a desktop in the last couple of decades would be (and most likely beyond that, i remember around 2002 when i had a modem, i had to visit a web page at my ISP to allow me open various ports as many things were disabled by default). [0] this video [1] link
“only happen if you hook up an XP machine to be directly accessible to the Internet”
The kind of passive infection that is shown in popular videos like this one ( this video ) tend to only happen if you hook up an XP machine to be directly accessible to the Internet. Like, if you connect your XP machine to your router sitting in the middle of your Internet connection and don't forward every port, you should be fine in that regard at least. There is also Supermium which is a relatively recent version of Chromium backported to run on Windows XP with all the security patches that brings, but with that being said I still would not do anything security critical on it.
