Hello everyone, hello everyone. Hello everyone. Hello. Hello everyone. Hello, everyone
Today is November 1st 2018 and on this day 10 years ago at 2:21 p.m. Central Time
I uploaded the very first malware video on my channel Danooct1
This video be a retrospective look at the past 10 years of my channel, how everything began
How its evolved and, what it'll be like going forward
Like I mentioned 10 years ago on November 1st
2008 when I was still a senior in high school
I obtained a pack of 3 viruses off of some obscure forum post that I spent hours digging through Google to find
those viruses were Happy 99 the Love-Letter worm and
One other that I can't really remember but I don't think it was that important because I never made a video on it
At the time I'd been reading about computer viruses and their effects for about 4 years
So I was excited to see what an actual and computer and see what it could actually do
There were a couple of other channels on YouTube at the time doing what I did on
neutral being the biggest one at the time
however, it had been more than a year since his previous video and the other channel that made malware videos only made about 2 of
Them so being interested in the subject
I figured I'd just record a video on it and upload it to YouTube. The happy 99 video is pretty bad
My camera is all over the place. I haphazardly zoom in and out, trying to show all the details
But in the end you really can't glean much of interest off the video
But people seem to like it and it actually garnered about 500 views over the first couple of months. It was up in January
I stumbled upon a site calling itself the virus source code database which had several hundred
Ms-dos virus source codes listed the only one I could ever get to actually compile and work was Acid Trip
Which became my second video, Well, not quite my second
There's another video on my channel that is now unlisted that was second, but it's not an actual virus
So it doesn't count, following the acid trip video
I found a huge treasure trove of viruses online which enabled my channel to grow at a geometric rate in the first two months of
My channel I made about 4 or 5 videos
And over the next three months added over a hundred more videos on to that total
I got my first subscriber in January of 2009 and had reached 100 by the time that I reached my 100 video in April of
2009 to celebrate that fact
I made a couple of really cringey virus compilation video set to music
One being sent the Gustav
Holst's Mars the bringer of war and the second set to Dream Theater's panic attack because I was really into rock band 2 at the
time
Like I said before I use my mom's old camera to make these original videos and if we take a look at it
There's actually still some original videos still on its internal memory chip. I
Don't know what I was attempting to record with these videos
But whatever it is, it's ancient and it's unreleased Danooct1 material
Now if that isn't just the most classic video you've ever seen then you should unsubscribe right now
If you've watched my really early stuff, you know, I didn't narrate for a long time
[Frantic key pressing]
It's because I really didn't like my voice and wasn't comfortable throwing it out there
So I opted to describe everything that the virus was doing by typing it out in the description and hoping that people read it
now most of the time they didn't which led to a lot of confused comments in the description because in order to show the virus
I just kind of shoved the camera up into the screen at relevant portions trying to show what it was doing
Often times it was illegible and impossible to tell what was actually going on
But I liked it and apparently some other people did too because my channel was continuing to grow
Now because this was my exciting new hobby that I really enjoyed doing. I tried to make videos all the time
And since I was a nerd with pretty much no life, this was very possible often times
I would read about a virus that I was interested in and then immediately fire up my computer or the virtual machine and get a
Recording of it no matter what time of day it was or what might have been going on around me
If you take a look in the background on my HPS virus video you can actually see my friend Jonathan
Hanging out as we were playing Mega Man 3
I just happened to also be reading about viruses and found the HPS virus which just had to be made into a video
So I did
As time went on I began to get pretty self-conscious of my growing weight and my horrible horrible long high school hair
So I started recording later and later at night to sort of reduce the chances that somebody would see my reflection in the computer monitor
But in spite of that I did learn to appreciate my voice and began narrating videos pretty terribly
the first video I ever narrated it was the
Abraxas DOS virus video if you take a look carefully at this one when the virus activates it actually made me jump because I wasn't
Expecting it so you can see that a camera shake a little bit
alright
Today we will be testing the Abraxis.com DOS virus
It's supposed to display a graphical effect and an upward ascending scale
Obviously that is very annoying.
That's all there is to it from then on I tried to keep all the videos narrated as best I could
but they still wound up being about 10 to 12 second blurbs where I sent the name of the virus a quick description of what
It did and then just kind of threw the camera at the screen and hoped you could tell what was happening
The Metallica virus messes with the screen when it is executed
As you can see here the screens going pretty crazy
And as time went on so did the videos
moved out for college in June of 2009 in the very first video
I made there was the radio dose virus being almost exactly the same as all the other videos before it as
I started recording videos in my new apartment
However, having roommates made it difficult to record whenever I wanted so I started to record later and later at night
Which has become pretty much a staple to record and pitch blackness these days for a while in 2009
I would pick up my screen recorder and just directly capture the screen opting not to
narrate and
Instead go back to typing in the description what the virus was doing now since these were screen recorded that video captures were much clearer
However, losing the narration was really detrimental to the overall virus video in my opinion
I also began experimenting with remaking some of my old crappy videos
namely with the melting screen and wallpaper macro viruses
These were just viruses that I thought were cool and deserved a little better than my terrible freehand camera in January of 2010
I realized I could ramp up the authenticity of these virus videos by purchasing a standalone computer that ran ms-dos natively
About an old 486 or something off of ebay made a couple of videos and the thing quickly crapped out
I'm pretty sure the RAM died but being a total vintage computer noob at the time. I had no idea how to fix it
So I wound up taking out the parts and just throwing the whole thing away
But there was one benefit to this experience was that I realized I could indeed start collecting these
Computers and seeing the viruses in real time as they were meant to be experienced back in the day
Whenever you'd run these viruses on the virtual machines
They'd run so much faster than they would ever expect the processor to be these viruses were written in the era of the 286
And the 386 and now running them in 2009 meant an exponential increase in the amount of processing speed available
You'd be lucky to be able to see anything. The virus was trying to do
Just doing a quick video happy new year brand new year 2012
Anyway, I noticed that seamless did is a whole lot less frightening when it's running at true speed as you can see here
So so having these period computers was a great help than being able to see these viruses the way they were meant to be experienced
Now since 2013 or 2014 my interest in collecting computers has waned so I've sold off quite a few of them
But I've kept the more influential ones can never hurt to have an IBM
5150 lying around in case you need to make a virus video on it
So around November of 2009. I reached 1,000 subscribers on my channel
I immediately applied to the YouTube Partnership Program and forgot about it
However in March of 2010 I was actually accepted now
I know you may not think that's much but at the time the YouTube Partnership Program was
Incredibly exclusive and difficult to get into and I have no idea what they were thinking accepting me at just a thousand subscribers
But for whatever reason they did
That enabled me to add some exclusive partnership banners on my channel page and on my videos and it was a really neat thing
Of course
The most important thing was that it also enabled ads on the video to pay out in ad revenue
Now over the years that my channel has been active this ad revenue from all of you guys watching my videos has been a tremendous
Help in supporting this hobby and enabling me to spend more time actually making videos
Well, maybe not so much lately, but it has been helpful. Nonetheless
So thank you everybody and if you use an ad blocker
I don't really care because I do too
So you do you will all get along great fast forward one more year to April 2011
We discovered the magic of tripods together
And finally put an end to the terrible free hand camera that had plagued my videos for so long in that same month
I teamed up with my friend Romeo making cooperative videos on various subjects in malware and other subjects that had nothing but
do with malware and these co-op videos led to the creation of a cooperative channel called amp Dan one that many of you know about
For about four years it covered videos all sorts of topics culminating in a 24 hour livestream full of malware Whataburger and call-in Skype calls
good times
In December of 2011. I actually started making real remake videos
These were remake videos that I planned out and tried to make as good as possible
To replace the terrible versions that I had made before
Fun fact is that this started the format for the video names that I use today?
Being malware type first followed by a period then the platform it runs on and another period and finally the malware name itself
Usually these names were taken from Kaspersky's naming list
However, sometimes I use the other vendors names or in the case of more popular stuff like you are an idiot
I would just use the common vernacular for the name
And once these remake videos started rolling out alongside new malware the format for my future videos really stayed along those lines and hasn't changed
much since
From time to time I would do more special videos for the more unique viruses like cih and love-letter
Cih was a fun one because it actually flashed the computer's bios and made it unable to boot
And I also made it on the day that cih activates April 26th
Similarly for love letter I ran it on May 4th 2012
which was twelve years to the day after love letter started spreading in the wild a
Few of these videos were incredibly fun to make including Sasser
Which took a long time to get set up and going but it was very rewarding
once it did I
Took over my houses living room for a while with a bunch of computers and network cables running everywhere so that all the machines would
Talk to each other and eventually infect each other
Similar to that one. I was also able to use my DDR machines computer for my
75,000 subscribers special featuring the blaster worm. This video was set up almost exactly the same as the Sasser video, but hey,
What else am I going to show off my dance dance revelution cabinet?
Over the years my channel and videos have become mildly viral of a couple of times but nothing ever too extravagant first
These times was in the later months of 2013 when I gave an interview to Wired magazine who published the article online
It's led to a pretty dramatic increase in my then 30,000 subscriber numbers and Garn a lot more viewers
However, unfortunately, this was also right around the time that Google started rolling out mandatory Google Plus for all YouTube channels
So a lot of the hype surrounding that kind of died down really quick
The next and currently biggest popularity boost on my channel happened in May of 2016
When I posted my love letter worm video on May 4th 2016 to commemorate at 16th anniversary
Now I posted this video at lunchtime and expected nothing of it when I checked back a couple hours. Later
It was rising in popularity and eventually reached number two on the hole site
Let's led to an explosion in the popularity of my channel for a short period garnering over a million views that day and over
20,000 subscribers over the following month now right around that time
I was at 80,000 subscribers and this pushed me over the mark to 100 thousand
Which I had been after for a long time
And I knew that once I hit 100,000 subscribers that I was going to make a video on my favorite worm the Magister worm
this kicked off into another couple week frenzy of trying to get a bunch of computers networks and talking to each other but
Eventually the video did come together and it's currently one of my most favorite videos that I've ever made
The last couple times my channel has been notable has been the two most recent ransomware outbreaks now
I probably don't have to tell you that that was one a cry and not that yeah
unfortunately when I made my not petia video
I did not do my homework and ended up making a video on the original version of petia
And of course, this is what got picked up by news outlets and republished on online articles. Oops
I did make a video on the proper very in a couple weeks. Later
But not before my original video had already gone semi viral, my bad
Along these lines one of the highlights of my malware career was giving the keynote
presentation at the Swiss next cyber virus exhibit in San Francisco in 2015
They had a whole museum set up of old
Computers and you could walk in and run old viruses on them and eventually would clean itself up
So all these people could play around with old malware like I had been doing on my channel
I met some really cool people and it was a nice opportunity
To bring old malware to a large in-person audience and I would love to get the chance to do something like that again
So we'll see what the future has to hold as far as future talks go
Finally the last big phase that my channel has gone through has been the viewer made malware series over the last couple of years
Sorry, if you wanted to get something featured Cirie's but I didn't feel right promoting the creation of potentially dangerous software
Even if it was for old outdated operating systems, although I like the idea behind it and things you guys submitted were very creative
I just didn't feel comfortable
promoting that kind of software creation
having a channel of my size can have a lot of influence and I don't want any of that influence to be overly negative if
You know what? I mean? Hopefully I'm making some sense and that my rationale isn't completely off the wall
But nonetheless I'm very thankful and glad that all of you are so enthusiastic and submitted so many cool things
If you submitted them to my forums, I've still got copies of all of them
So if for some reason the future I ever do go back to making these videos. I still do have them all
I don't believe the series will ever be revived but it is a possibility and I still have that stuff. So stay tuned
Well, that's about it for me
Thanks everyone for watching this video and sharing my ramblings as I explored the past of my channel
if you've got any favorite memories of watching my videos or any favorite video that you want to give a shout out to I'd love
To hear anything and everything you have to share
thanks everyone very much for watching and for joining me in the last 10 years of documenting and
Demonstrating old malware that no one remembers much about anymore. I hope you enjoyed this video
Thanks again. Take care