Attackers Hacked 50,000 Printers to Promote PewDiePie YouTube Channel

This may look like funny, but it’s not!

The war between the “most subscribed YouTube Channel” between T-Series and PewDiePie is an interesting competition and just few days back the hackers hijacked over 50,000 internet connected printers worldwide to print out and it is asking everyone that immediately subscribe to PewDiePie YouTube channel.

PewDiePie, basically its real name is Felix Kjellberg, who is well known and famous YouTuber from Sweden, who is known for his game commentary and pranks and has had the most subscribers on the entire YouTube platform since 2013.

However, the channel which is owned by the Bollywood named “T-Series” has been catching up in a recent month, and now both are hovering around 72.5 million YouTube subscribers.

The fear that the PewDiePie won’t remain the number one most subscribed YouTube channel in world, an anonymous attacker (it can be simply his die-hard fan) with a twitter username “TheHackerGiraffe” came up with a hackish idea.

TheHackerGiraffe who has scanned the Internet to find out the most vulnerable printers lists over internet with the port 9100 open by using Shodan, a search engine for internet connected devices and exploited them to spew out a message, which says:

“PewDiePie is in trouble, and he needs your help to defeat T-Series!”

“PewDiePie, the currently most subscribed to channel on YouTube, is at stake of losing his position as the number one position by an Indian company called T-Series that simply uploads videos of Bollywood trailers and campaigns,”

And the message which also to unsubscribe from T-Series channel and to subscribe to PewDiePie instead.

This malicious hacker simply uses an open source hacking toolkit which helps him to exploit the vulnerable printers, called Printer Exploitation Toolkit (PRET), which is basically designed for testing printers against the various known vulnerabilities, allowing the hackers to capture or manipulate the print jobs.

Well, it’s a nice raise to cybersecurity awareness and consequences of leaving the vulnerable printers exposed online, law and information security experts do not recommend other white hat hackers to participate in such stunts.

“Spread the word with your friends about printers and printer security! This is actually a scary matter,” the hacker tweeted.

You might not be aware that even your fax number can be literally enough for attacker to gain access to your printer and infiltrate the rest of your network connected to it.

Now the gap is between these two channels and lets see and wait for PewDiePie, will it win the crown of most subscribed YouTube channel.

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