Hackers Collaborate to Encourage People to Subscribe to PewDiePie (Again)
The past year has seen YouTuber PewDiePie incorporated in a handful of creative hacks. Presumably this is because PewDiePie’s #1 spot has been threatened by Indian rival T-Series, so loyal fans have been resorting to potentially less legal means of attracting new subscribers.
The most recent hack dubbed #CastHack exploits vulnerable Google Chromecasts, smart TVs and Google Homes by renaming devices “HACKED_SUB2PEWDS_#” and by displaying unauthorized video that both notifies the victim of their vulnerability as well as encouraging them to subscribe to PewDiePie.
CastHack is the work of the hacker duo HackerGiraffe and j3ws3r. The same duo behind another recent hack that occurred back in November which forced tens of thousands of printers to print paper that encouraged people to subscribe to PewDiePie.
The duo maintain though that their hacks are more about exposing vulnerabilities than about either promoting PewDiePie or harming anyone.
“We’re only trying to protect you and inform you of this [vulnerability] before someone takes real advantage of it.”
HackerGiraffe even condemned the actions of those who hacked the Wall Street Journal to promote PewDiePie.
“The Wall Street [_Journal_] one was harmful and goes against what we stand for”
If You’re Affected
For anyone affected by the hack the best way to fix it as confirmed by both Google and HackerGiraffe is “Disable UPnP on your router, and if you’re port forwarding ports 8008/8443/8009 then STOP forwarding them.” This is because this is a router exploit, it takes advantage of incorrectly set up routers.
Credit: The Verge, ZD Net, HackerGiraffe’s Twitter, CastHack Website
