PewDiePie ransomware oblige users subscribe to PewDiePie YouTube channel

It is a battle with no holds barred between T-Series and PewDiePie, their fans are spreading the PewDiePie ransomware to force users to subscribe to PewDiePie Youtube channel.

The story I’m going to tell you is another chapter of the battle between the most followed Youtuber T-Series and PewDiePie. T-Series is an Indian music company, while PewDiePie a Youtuber whom fans are accused to use any means to increase the number of subscribers to its 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.

News of the day is that PewDiePie fans have launched a PewDiePie ransomware to force victims to follow their idol.

In the last months, security experts have spotted at least two strains of the PewDiePie ransomware, the first one in mid-December. Malware researchers that analyzed it discovered that is was a modified version of the ShellLocker ransomware likely written by a novice. The ransomware didn’t save encryption keys or upload them anywhere causing the loss of the encrypted data.

In January, experts discovered a second piece of PewDiePie ransomware dubbed PewCrypt. The malware is written in Java and was developed to allow file decryption once PewDiePie has gained over 100 million followers. At the time of writing, PewDiePie had around 90 million fans, this means that victims would have to wait for a long time before regaining access to their files.

It isn’t the first time that PewDiePie fans made the headline for questionable conduct, in December an anonymous hacker hijacked over 50,000 internet-connected printers worldwide to print out messages promoting the subscription to the PewDiePie YouTube channel.

In January, a hacker that goes online with the moniker TheHackerGiraffe hacked thousands of Chromecasts and Smart TVs and ran advertisement asking people to subscribe to the PewDiePie channel on YouTube.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – PewDiePie ransomware, 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”.