zlacker

>>mouse_+(OP)
Back in the days of blaster, if you were connected to a network with infected machines or had a public IP address because you were connected straight into your cable modem, you would get infected in the windows installer before it finished installing. Nowadays, everything is behind NAT and there aren't any infected Windows XP machines left on your local network, so that's not a problem anymore.

>>jmgao+rb4
>Nowadays, everything is behind NAT and there aren't any infected Windows XP machines

All end-user PCs have been behind NAT since the late 90s unless the system was a dialup straggler. Enterprise users raw-dogging the internet only have themselves to blame.

>>snakey+4i4
I'm afraid this is factually wrong, my computer had a public IP until the early 2010s as around these days modems were just models and not routers too.

And with IPv6 all my devices could be publicly addressed but I've enabled a firewall to block incoming traffic at the router level.

>>alex_d+sm4
>my computer had a public IP until the early 2010s as around these days modems were just models and not routers too.

You realize that wasn't the norm though right?

>>Suppaf+PT5
It was. Our 56k modem was a PCI card. Later we had ISDN and ADSL modems (I still use the latter to this day). I only got a router (a Linksys device) to attach multiple computers to the internet. It was a few years before ISPs started bundling routers and WiFi APs.

>>globul+Mc6
I hadn’t made that connection about 56k and public IPs until now. I just used it at the time before I had any of the knowledge I did now. Interesting!

>>thebru+ti6
I didn't think about it before I got the router. I found it a bit annoying because I had to think about things like port forwarding. Previously everything just worked without any configuration (like P2P file sharing or running a game server). I'm not sure I really understood it even then, though. Just followed instructions parrot fashion.

>>globul+wx6
Yep, same for me. I was just a teenager wanting to play games and then suddenly I had to know about port forwarding.