50,000 Printers Were Sacrificed For A YouTube Rivalry

Fan boys and fan girls around the world have nothing on this anonymous hacker who hijacked 50,000 printers in a bid to keep PewDiePie on the top spot of YouTube’s most popular channels.

As absurd as it sounds it’s true, and in a parallel universe not so far away, it’s also spooky. A hacker fanboy has discovered a vulnerability which made 50,000 printers spit out messages in support of the Swede’s highly popular and controversial YouTube channel.

It all started a while back when T-Series, a channel dedicated to Bollywood trailers and songs started edging PewDiePie’s reign on subscriber numbers. The celebrity vlogger was quick to notice and started a campaign to keep him in the top spot.

A hacker fanboy has discovered a vulnerability which made 50,000 printers spit out messages in support of the Swede’s highly popular and controversial YouTube channel.

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TheHackerGiraffe took the pledge a step further and discovered a repository which shows open devices connected to the internet and took over 50,000 of them, causing a massive printout of messages in support of PewDiePie and steps for users to follow to help him maintain the most popular channel on YouTube.

Why are local printers being hacked for this pic.twitter.com/fAnNTIp6ds

— madison. (@maddybenavente1) November 29, 2018

The hacker now claims that this was all part of a plan to bring awareness to the vulnerabilities connected devices pose.

Spread the word with your friends about printers and printer security! This is actually a scary matter. Will tweet everything about this entire #pewdiepie hack later to explain to everyone exactly what went down. Also @pewdiepie please notice me

— TheHackerGiraffe (@HackerGiraffe) November 30, 2018