Hacker hijacks printers worldwide to promote popular YouTube channel

The TheHackerGiraffe used the Printer Exploitation Toolkit (PRET) to hijack +50k vulnerable printers to Promote PewDiePie YouTube Channel.

An anonymous hacker hijacked over 50,000 internet-connected printers worldwide to print out messages promoting the subscription to the PewDiePie YouTube channel. Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, is a popular Swedish Youtuber, comedian, and video game commentator, formerly best known for his Let’s Play commentaries and now mostly known for his comedy and vlogs.

This is the last act of disputed for the “most-subscribed Youtube channel” crown between T-Series and PewDiePie.

The PewDiePie has more than 73 million YouTube subscribers.

Now a hacker with the Twitter account TheHackerGiraffe decided to promote his favourite YouTube channel in his way, he hacked tens of thousands of printers exposed online.

The hacker scanned the Internet for printers with port 9100 open using Shodan and hacked them publishing a message that invited the victims to unsubscribe from T-Series channel and subscribe to PewDiePie instead.

“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,”

The TheHackerGiraffe used the Printer Exploitation Toolkit (PRET) to compromise vulnerable printers. The PRET is a legitimate developed by researchers from Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany for testing purposes.

The case is very singular and raises the discussion about the importance of properly secure Internet-connected devices.

In this case, attackers simply printed out a message but vulnerable printers exposed online could be the entry points for attackers that with further lateral movements can compromise an entire network and access sensitive information.

Don’t forget that every device in your organization that is exposed online enlarges your attack surface.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Securi ty Affairs – vulnerable printers, hacking)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.