Virus.Win16.Tentacle

/ danooct1
I'd recommend watching with headphones to get the full "hard drive clicking" sound experience, but that's up to you.
This virus has a few surprises, and I wasn't even going to go through with recording it until I realized that it actually did change the icons successfully, but you have to open them up in the icon viewer to see it.

[@aiurxx9642]

I'm a Tentacles survivor. In the summer of '96/97, 14/15 year old me spent countless hours online with the warez group I was with, O\\'E to dominate the AOL warez space. I usually downloaded and repacked files on my Win 3.11 machine. While browsing for new releases I came across this dogs program. Wanting to have something to share with my dog loving toddler sister, I downloaded it and loaded the crack. It came from one of our trusted partners and was supposed to be cleaned. After a few days (well, nights) my PC was completely borked. Tentacles everywhere. Complete system instability. I used this an excuse to finally get Windows 95 installed and move on with my life with a lesson learned.

[@danooct1]

great addition! I always love hearing from someone with direct experience with the malware featured - usually that's limited to the bigger offenders (Sasser, Loveletter, etc.)

[@Cr4z3d]

Aww, that was sweet of you to think of your sister that way though.

[@MetroPolice17]

@@danooct1 How many computers do you have?

[@MetroPolice17]

If free or in the future, reviews make video clips about strange websites that are at risk of infection I want to know how the virus infects What will the effect be?

[@antt2228]

@@MetroPolice17 He has at least 6 I think: he shows some in the blaster and sasser showcases, and he has his main computer that he runs the VMs on

[@kantraa]

fun fact: this so called Dogz crack took exactly 1 minute and 39 seconds to freeze the computer

[@kijete]

99 seconds. neat

[@Panklne]

hi kanter

[@Belchmaster41]

I think the whole system is shot

[@aquakun3869]

r/hedidthemath

[@kantraa]

@@Panklne Hello Bro

[@TankGuy827]

"The 90s were a *ruff* time." God damnit.

[@dimitar4y]

DOG* damnit.

[@dovacon7409]

​Dog gamnit*

[@m0-m0597]

what da dog doin

[@Toxoid49b]

It's almost impressive how long this virus manages to bludgeon the disk trying to infect literally anything. Would love to know what it's trying to do that whole time. The payload is pretty neat too, usually malware that changes program icons either completely removes the icon or replaces the icons of everything it infects. Might have to try something like that for my own stuff.

[@MandrakeFernflower]

I wonder if it messes with interrupt 13 There's a similar dos virus with the payload source known

[@meanmole3212]

NSA wants to know your loc... RESUME.

[@HawtyHaven]

I got a computer virus from I think a fraud editor software, it was a popular one so you might know it. But I downloaded the fake software and after a year of not using it I decided to delete and after that my whole computer was screwed up. Downloads was gone and my icons were missing, and nothing was working, and this was pretty recent. At that point I just started fresh with windows and downloaded Malwarebytes to scan my computer free of anything harmful. Now I never click ads :D

[@chaosFête]

I remember this one! I was obsessed with dogs, and my grandpa was prone to trying out all kinds of sketchy software so he must’ve gotten this from somewhere shady. I remember running it over and over trying to get my dog game to work :’)

[@Aquaticdragon]

Same exact story here!!! Grandpa and all!

[@wmdtone]

That gentle fan hum and hard disk clicking is just beyond nostalgic

[@TheLastPariah89]

My Lenovo Y700 (2016) makes those same noises...

[@wmdtone]

@@TheLastPariah89 congrats?

[@omgnoi]

I was thinking the same thing!! I love it

[@leon_De_Grelle]

I loved "Dogz". It had decent "AI", for what it's worth, for its time, and it functioned like an intelligent Tomagatchi. There was an entire line-up of this software including "Catz" and probably some other animals. Cute and fun, a decent desktop toy.

[@goatmanilla]

It was a better time. Far more innocent.

[@peachymunmagenta]

It got waaaay better over time! Petz 5 was the last game to be officially released

[@fl570]

@@goatmanilla Definitely more innocent. Release something like that today and the vast majority of people are going to make fun of you.

[@dibberz-v1z]

then ubisoft bought the rights and flooded the market espeically the ds and wii market with enough half assed sequels and spins to make even hollywood blush

[@NatetheNintendofan]

@@dibberz-v1z to try to leach off the succsess of nintendogs

[@Lenoh]

5:39 Considering, in a certain Windows version, an acceptable retail key is "1111-1111-1111-1111", I wouldn't doubt 9999-0000 would be acceptable.

[@urphakeandgey6308]

In Windows XP, it won't let you use "Hiffwe" as a name. At least it did when I tried. I have no idea why and you're probably wondering why I even tried "Hiffwe." It's a meme from 420chan. I'm pretty sure XP predates that imageboard though.

[@brundle_fly_3895]

Which windows version is that?

[@sodaodaoda]

@@brundle_fly_3895 I'm guessing Win95, I think I saw a video on that

[@Jobby_James]

The Dogz crack code looks like someone tried to brute force it, and if it was legit, could effectively crack it without any special software or techniques. Also, the fact that the virus references Day of the Tentacle is dope, I wouldn't mind having my PC destroyed with a virus like that! Except for the fact that I would it very irritating having different icons for all my programs and for all them to be the same, regardless of what it depicts.

[@Belchmaster41]

this why I upgraded right to 98 for a more stable OS

[@JesuszillaS]

That's an oddly specific market to target. It's as if the virus were made by someone who was on the team that worked on Dogz who wrote this to thwart off would-be pirates.

[@johnathanegbert9277]

I know right?

[@BlackMageDark]

Your captions lately are priceless btw! They definitely add to the danooct1 experience 😎

[@realstray15]

YES

[@rx500android]

Definitely

[@648]

sooo true

[@RetroPlus]

Indeed

[@Povilaz]

Yep, they're pure gold.

[@migitri]

I remember the Petz games! I had Catz 4 when I was a kid. I loved it so much. I had a cat named Cookies and my dad accidentally deleted the cat. He had been trying to delete the cookies from Internet Explorer, but instead he just searched for the word "cookies" in the filesystem and deleted every file with the name "cookies" in it, including my cat... I was so mad. It took me a while to forgive him for deleting my cat. In my defense, I was only like 8 or 9 years old. In his defense, it was the year 2000-ish and he wasn't too tech savvy at the time (he's gotten much better at navigating computers over the years and now has a successful career that requires him to know his way around a computer). Over 20 years later, my dad and I still joke that he killed the family cat. 😂 He said he probably deleted some of my mom's cookie recipes too.

[@plushifoxed]

the way i instinctually replied "it's a pipe b‌omb!" when i saw that "what is that mysterious ticking noise?" in the subtitles...

[@FellowElite]

Snape... Snape...

[@FooPanda]

@@FellowElite Serverous Snape

[@Wflash00]

DUMBLEDORE!!

[@TreeeLeeeaf]

Ron, Ron, Ron WEAsley

[@WannabeMarysue]

I really hope somebody plays Day of the Tentacle for the first time because of this video. Its so good.

[@crispycuero]

LOVE DAY OF THE TENTACLE!!!

[@UltimatePerfection]

Here's a fun thing to try when you don't have any interesting viruses you have not talked about in the past: try running viruses in environments they don't expect, like running DOS viruses on Windows/DosBox or Win16 viruses on OS/2, then document if they behave any different from when running them under the "perfect" conditions.

[@HAV0X_]

windows viruses on wine would be sick!

[@PhoenixClank]

I guess you'd need some "good" viruses for that, the last few didn't even run properly on the system they were written for!

[@Slop_Dogg]

This is how most people demo old viruses on here, I was shocked this guy was using old hardware lol

[@ThePhantomSafetyPin]

"I want the file manager to be a tentacle" is not a phrase I thought I would hear today but here we are...

[@harishankar_]

I love the closed captions on these videos. Sometimes I wish I had an old PC to be able to run these old operating systems, and perhaps try out a few viruses, like you have been doing for many years. I realise it's possible to make a virtual machine, but that's not nearly as authentic, is it? This is a cool video, Dan. I hope you have a nice day, too! :-)

[@AirknightTails]

While not "authentic" 86Box is as close as you can in terms of 386 Emulation

[@kgallchobhair]

Click click, but maliciously

[@Pgpxd]

It's actually pretty authenthic to use a Virtual Machine, but now that you want to use Windows 95/98, you would have to get a key for the OS.

[@RBMK1500]

​@@Pgpxdfor win95 any number that divides by 7. or just 0000000 😂

[@dimitar4y]

the extended "sitting in the dark infront of the pc, waiting for it to boot" reminded me of weird nightmares I had. It was on a XP computer. A "hacker" somewhere had back door access to my computer through some sort of bios thing. And he'd hack my computer randomly. Things would start acting weird. And then the PC would just freeze for a moment, and then hit me with a screamer. But here's the catch. I can't restart it, reboot it or anything. Pulling the plug would shut it off, and after it turns on, right out of bios, screamer again. I'd reinstall the OS, but screamer would trigger while installing, or after fresh install. There were a lot of small little details that are hard to recall. But the biggest fuckup is that it was a recurring nightmare. With every new time I had the nightmare, I'd recognize the symptoms and rush to shut down the computer.... And then it would just boot on its own and screamer anyway! :( ... And a large portion of the dream was the silently sitting in the dark waiting for the computer to boot.. just to get fucked up by the somehow infected motherboard.

[@Tazamo]

I had a similar nightmare a few times, but no hacker, screamer, or waiting. Instead, it was constant panic as some virus would take complete control of the system to talk at me, berating me for downloading a dangerous file and afterward proceeding to delete all my files while laughing. It created itself a face not unlike the one in Possessed, although behind it was a blue screen (of death) and it was animated fluidly to the point it almost seemed like it was alive! Even if I unplugged the machine, it would keep trying to boot up. When it did, it would laugh at my attempts to turn it off and then continue deleting.

[@SoftBreadSoft]

I had a similar nightmare when I was a teenager lol. It's like those immortal clown nightmares but for computer nerds

[@dimitar4y]

@@SoftBreadSoft there was a cuckoo clock that would be randomly in my room at night nightmare, and it just cuckoo-s out a clown hand puppet that just went "BLERGH" in the most comical way and it made me wake up. I was not frightened by it or anything and it is by far the weirdest thing to wake me up

[@malwaretestingfan]

The fun part is that this nightmare is (at least in part) real. A malware called LoJax can rewrite the UEFI thru RwEverything, adding it's own driver and essentially making itself resistant to any change in OS or HW (with the exception of the motherboard), and it works as a backdoor, taking commands from a C2 server. Infected computers were reported to "act weird", and i've read that it prevents any non-Windows OS being installed in a forum (even if as of now no AVer ever specified it can do that).

[@dimitar4y]

@@malwaretestingfan Oh. That's informative. Thanks! Now to be toxic, ew uefi. Also ew 'secure platform'. BIOS/MBR is the way to go, all this new crap is intended to take away your freedoms and ban you from 'owning' your device, like VR headsets and smartphones are firmware locked.

[@sutorippuwebmaster8783]

I had Dogz. I can't remember how I got the shareware version but the passive-aggressive whining of the Dogz when you closed out of it eventually got me to buy the full version. Guess I dodged a bullet here.

[@fdert]

Still watching your videos 6+ years later! Your videos really helped spark my interest in malware and I'm about to get my degree in IT Systems Security because of it, thank you!

[@crispycuero]

Did you get it?

[@fdert]

@@crispycuero Yes I did, and I'm now a security engineer

[@crispycuero]

congrats@@fdert

[@foxtailedcritter]

Tenticals in my computer? It's more likely then you think.

[@ShyGuyXXL]

Aww, I was hoping the virus would put a bunch of differently colored tentacles from the game on your screen that jump around, which you can't get rid of, and they just keep multiplying until your PC laggs so hard that you can't do anything anymore. That would've been fun.

[@keifcuadras9742]

I really like content creators like you that take the extra time to put hidden messages in the captions that you wouldn't normally see if you had them off. I always found that nice for some reason

[@CutieFakeKirby]

When the class hacker and class clown work together: Hacker: quick! Think of a good name for the virus! Clown: T E N T A C L E

[@terrorbyte5352]

Adventure game fan:*chakles loudly*

[@MetaBloxer]

This video inspired me to play Day of the Tentacle Remastered. I enjoyed it, and had some "a-ha!" moments, but still needed a walkthrough for a concerning amount of the game.

[@nicholas6613]

So I have a copy of Dogz in a slightly different packaging than the one featured in the video with a copyright date of 1995. It looks like either this crack doesn't even bother pretending to give you a real product key, or the format of the product key changed between releases. My product key is 3 sets of 4 digits, formatted as xxxx-xxxx-xxxx.

[@plaguis1391]

"America grew up listening to us. It still does." I suddenly very much miss my old 80286...rest in peace, Packard Bell.

[@dimitar4y]

i wonder if there is/was ever a virus that installs an anti-virus to uninstall itself.

[@juggernaut6832]

Day of the Tentacle

[@beetheimmortal]

I really like these videos for the old hardware featured. It's so good to listen to the hum of those old components and makes the whole thing much more calming for me, somehow.

[@hydetombstoneteddy8118]

Im not sure what it is about your videos that is so satisfying but Im always here at the drop of a dime.

[@samettekin2356]

Same. It just has a chilling vibe it makes you feel comfy.

[@Dmckenzie6]

@@samettekin2356 I feel like it's the hum of the older computers. Everytime I hear it, I just get sleepy.

[@user-dt8fi1ee7b]

Nice to see, that Dan is now uploading more oftenly. P.S. as always, nice and interesting video. Although, while I read its name before watching video I expected, that the payload is going to be the tentacles touching every program and after some time erasing them, which destructs the system.

[@killpidone]

"That's the stupidest combination I've ever heard in my life! That's the kinda thing an idiot would have on his luggage!"

[@AnthonyArdovini]

I love that you’re uploading regularly again, happy to have you back!

[@RicardoRamosRetrocomputacao]

A friend worked developing software in the 90's, he told me that he himself developed the "cracks" for his own software, but containing viruses and malicious instructions, as it was a way to punish the individual who didn't want to buy, and a way to put fear in people not to use pirated software.

[@RetroPlus]

I was expecting tentacles to come out of the computer or something

[@emmaray7585]

Dogz!! I absolutely loved playing the PF Magic petz games when I was a kid. They made Dogz, Catz, and even a weird alien one called Oddballz. The Dogz and Catz games had 5 installments each I believe until Ubisoft bought out the petz titles and completely changed them into much more boring petz games in my opinion. The cool thing was you could combine the Dogz and Catz games if you had both and make it into “petz 3” or “petz 5” and so on depending on which version of the games you had. I personally played petz 3 and 5 mostly when I was a kid. Really funny games with some hilarious voice acting for the animals!

[@tomrow32]

5:45 To be fair, Visual Basic 6 can be cracked with a key of ascending digits

[@cocusar]

or all ones

[@lumer2b]

Windows 95 IIRC too

[@dave-io]

I picked this up from the Dogz crack and can tell you that at least the version I used did in fact generate a working key. I don't remember noticing any significant slowdown, either - I was totally unaware of the infection until running a routine scan a few days later. Seems to me that there were a few variants.

[@SLZeroArrow]

Hes back once again, this time...with a good ol Win16 virus from years ago that went fairly unnoticed.

[@andresbravo2003]

Windows 3.1 man. That's awesome. Hard Drive Clicking might be cool for my ears and sometimes it sounds great for my ears.

[@elijahr241]

You should consider buying a sound system so we can hear windows 9x/3.x’s iconic sounds

[@EricchiYukia]

The BIOS of your computer just turned 30! Check the number that appears at boot. It says 19920225151230 (25 February 1992 15:12:30)!

[@sweetypuss]

only five more years and it can run for office

[@MandrakeFernflower]

How do you make an octopus laugh? With ten-tickles!

[@jfdoot6094]

waking up to see a danooct1 post is the best feeling ever

[@catboytartaglia]

i binge watch your videos during class, happy that youre still uploading

[@camwoodstock]

I feel like I could... Like I could... Like... I... Could... *TAKE ON THE HARD DRIVE!!!* [THUNDER]

[@MrCobalt]

This video and this comment.... It might be time to install ScummVM and play DOTT once again.

[@avelino.addams]

You were my childhood, man. Thanks for still being active. Saludos desde Curacaví, Chile

[@lmnk]

Jokes on you Dan, if I'd even need to make a software with a keycode, I'll make 9999-0000(-00000-..) a valid one, just as an easter egg

[@crazy_wwww]

i love the subtitles for the full boot sequence

[@RadikAlice]

YT recommended this and it seemed interesting so why not, and man. What a surprise to see P.F. Magic be mentioned at all here, they're better known for Ballz 3D

[@Mjlcarguy456]

That CRT monitor looks gorgeous in HDR🤯

[@bishubi]

Bless whoever wrote the captions.

[@purplefoxmcbe7309]

Tentacle moment

[@firstherest4460]

Dude, I just found your channel. I love your videos. They're so relaxing, and the real aspect of the old computers makes it so much better. It's like I'm back in the computer room again with my cousins playing on the family computer. Keep on truckin man :)

[@crazycorg1]

Oh dang I just realized you upload in hdr, nice touch

[@VectraQS]

I wasn't aware that any file enumeration methods had a complexity of O(n!).

[@CH11LER.]

Oh I remember these days. My dad's 1st PC came with Catz which was awful lol

[@trqcker]

17 minutes of dans blessing

[@omgnoi]

The old computer sounds is music to my ears

[@GamingPalOllieMK]

Amazing video There was no need for a crack for Doz and Catz tho, all you needed was a working serial which pirated copies came with anyway. I was big into virtual pets and the Petz series was amazing, before they turned them into video games.

[@FooPanda]

Same, and Ubisoft even later published some keys for free :)

[@Epicness123]

1:41 “the 90s were a RUFF time” nice

[@adriancain471]

That boot sequence 😩😩

[@ondrajavorik1580]

Ahhhh that Packard Bell start up and seek test never gets old

[@Aimbok]

I really love these longform videos. Some of your older content I watched back in the day was more longform as well. Keep it up Dan! :D

[@Onkoe]

Oh wow, thought this was an older video until I saw these comments. Thanks for the uploads, Dan! :)

[@StarryAngels17]

Ah yes, Windows 3.1. When I was growing up, this was my very first OS that I played games on. Glad to see you still have 3.1, Dan!

[@berry2813]

I really appreciate the CC on this video! Great work as always :)

[@EvanBear]

Could you upload a video just with noises from your computer? Those are the sounds of my childhood.

[@some_condiment]

oh my god, the bit with trying to run Edit totally makes me understand this one joke from Homestar Runner; in the episode where Strong Bad receives an email with a virus that breaks reality, the email TOTALLY looks like the result dan gets when running Edit. "Wait, is this a virus? Like the ones moms and cheap-rate casinos send you? I see a Strong Ba in there, but it's getting eaten up by some... Linux or something." ahhhh, classic!

[@nticompass]

Day of the Dogz? Dogz of the Tentacle? Tentacle Dogz?

[@raiden72]

I love to hear the hard drive clicking again. It's nostalgic.... 2006 vibes

[@Charlie-mb5yu]

love to see these videos being updated! please consider making your captions more straightforward - that is, leaving the jokes for the funny descriptions of sound effects, rather than inserted into the actual speech, and placing sound effects on a different line rather than inserting it between speech, as well as cutting back on tone jokes in general. some of them are funny, for sure, but if they're long or there are tone indicators on nearly every spoken line, it can get pretty annoying. your videos are well-spoken in general, so as a hard of hearing person that usually relies on captions, i can understand them without, but it's very nice to have them! :) as well as the little tidbits of information like what's making a specific noise.

[@unicodefox]

I didn't know Dan had a HDR camera. Wondered how the CRT was so much brighter than everything else on my screen in a dark room

[@invghost]

I've seen enough Danooct1 videos to know where this is going.

[@juppukun]

Hell yeah, our boi is reuploading again to bring joy in these bleak times.

[@Cr4z3d]

Fitting that the HDD sounds like a ticking timebomb while the virus is doing its work.

[@thetee8682]

Fun fact: MS took that virus, removed the icon-replacement function and renamed the file to 'wuauclt.exe' and bundled it with their later Windows versions.

[@shadesoftime]

Imagine thinking that the update check executable in 32 and 64 bit windows is a virus from the completely uncompatible 16 bit windows version

[@modables]

why??? wtf

[@andrive]

???

[@terrorbyte5352]

Purple Tentacle went from taking on the world, to taking on your computer. Gotta always start small!

[@drowningin]

I wonder why no one does desktop companions anymore. I had strippers on my windows 95. I didn't pay for or crack it though so it never was that dirty

[@deathclawplum]

those are still a thing! they're called shimeji nowadays though, and most are for browsers instead of your desktop. i used to have one of the pokemon larvitar :3

[@Dr_Tapeworm]

with it invading via a (crack for a virtual) dog, this is basically the plot of john carpenter's the thing you would reasonably expect a virus that disguises itself as a cracked game code and references day of the tentacle to disguise itself as, well, day of the tentacle, but maybe that would have been too on-the-nose?

[@youtube.commentator]

Thanks for uploading, always love these

[@ZenIsFluffy]

It's been a hot minute since I've watched a Dan video. I'm watching on my phone which I forgot supported HDR. I was then blinded when I put it in full screen haha.

[@isaacandersen1]

I love the subtitles 2:15 "click click, but maliciously."

[@omgnoi]

[click click but maliciously] I love your subtitles lol

[@SeppelSquirrel]

15:32 [ hard drive clicks anti-virusly ]

[@72muhamad72]

Explanation professional. Thank you. I love watching your excellent channel

[@D0Samp]

Microsoft Anti-Virus (based on the same Central Point Anti-Virus that would later become Norton Anti-Virus) at least was designed with the fact that it usually would never receive any update in mind, so VSafe (which could stop writes to executable files and boot sectors) and the optional checksum feature that could find modified programs during scans were much more useful.

[@DDRMixer]

My best friend growing up had "Dogs" on their computer. If you downloaded the demo and then installed the patches you could get the full game. :) Still remember that trick.

[@pavo1667]

the captions take the mvp for making the waiting funny

[@simtitan1]

It would be fascinating if you tried running some of these older viruses on a more modern machine, to see if they could still manage to do what they're supposed to.

[@djungelskog2654]

on win10 most viruses get insta deleted once you get connected to internet as windefender has a database old as time

[@modables]

the virus is 16 bit I don't think it would work at all

[@xaviersavedra711]

Woo, full boot up sequence! My life is complete, now. Lol.

[@ThatLinuxDude]

*reads the official name* HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM oh hey that reference, heard that's pretty good

[@retrorender8497]

Danooct1, uploading in HDR? The future is here!

[@fpsclips1]

I had this virus but remember it as “Tentacles” it was a win 95 machine. Got to the point where I had to do the dreaded “format c:\” I learned a lot about how computers work thanks to this I guess.

[@RoninCatholic]

Why do these old programs load faster than their modern equivalents on period appropriate hardware? Is modern software really just _so_ reliant on the expectation of better processors that it's written without much eye to optimization and winds up bloated? Because that's always been my guess.

[@sceerane8662]

To be fair, Windows back then was naturally less bloated in general than it is today. Given that it was newer and thus couldn't have literal *decades* of legacy code hanging off of it like modern Windows does.

[@quadroninja2708]

i think it is just that it is much harder to track some minor errors as software gets more complicated

[@CertifiedNEETClassic]

Nearly 2 straight minutes of hard drive action and it crashes. Those must be some crazy Dogz! 🤪

[@bloodflare3862]

why tf hovering over this turn my brightness up

[@mad1538]

Omg it's in HDR 😅 great vid as always

[@jxgamer1065]

9:32 the icon is from day of the tentacle