2 min read
Earlier in 2018, after the battle between T-Series and PewDiePie ensued for the top position on YouTube, fans from all around the world poured in to support their favorite channel. PewDiePie fans went a little overboard when they hacked more than 50,000 printers and even Wall Street Journal to display messages in support of PewDiePie.
It seems that they are back and with a little bit of a positive twist this time. Coupling their love for PewDiePiew with a bit of ethical hacking, they are warning users about a possible vulnerability in their router settings for smart TVs and Chromecasts, which make their devices publicly viewable on the internet.
The hack involved a video playing on affected smart TVs and Chromecast devices, with a message being displayed in the video urging the viewers to one, follow a link to learn how to be secure from this type of attack in the future, and two, more importantly, subscribe to PewDiePie on YouTube. You can see the video being played on affected devices below:
While talking to The Verge, the perpetrators behind this attack, HackerGiraffe, and j3ws3r, said that affected users can avoid this type of attack in the future by disabling Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) setting on their routers.
While this can be seen as all fun and games as part of an ongoing internet battle between PewDiePie and T-Series, it’s good that the hackers are also educating people about the importance of network security.
