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.

New secure key generated per drive letter… and they don't bother to save any of them. So not even the criminals can decrypt anyways.

— Michael Gillespie (@demonslay335) December 17, 2018

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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