PewDiePie-ransomware encrypts files permanently

Fans of YouTube star PewDiePie have developed two new types of ransomware, in an attempt to persuade as many people as possible to subscribe to its channel. That way, fans want him to beat rival T-Series as the most popular channel on Google’s streaming service.

When it comes to the number of subscribers, the Swede Felix Kjellberg has long been the most popular YouTuber. But in recent months he was caught up and finally even overtaken by the Indian music channel T-Series. Fans of PewDiePie didn’t like it and decided to do some tricks to encourage others to subscribe to his channel in particular.

What innocent began

At first, these attempts were still relatively harmless. For example, they hacked printers that then printed flyers saying that people should subscribe to the Kjellberg canal. Others hacked into Chromecasts, smart-tvs and Google Home devices to display similar messages.

However, the development of ransomware does not help at all. One of them is a modified version of ShellLocker and is now called PewDiePie ransomware. It encrypts files from hacked computers and requires victims to subscribe to the YouTube channel. Only the ransomware does not upload the keys, which means that files can no longer be restored.

The second ransomware is called PewCrypt and stores victims’ files until the PewDiePie channel reaches 100 million subscribers. But worse is the fact that there is a threat to permanently erase all data, if T-Series reaches that milestone earlier. The good news is that people whose device is infected with PewCrypt can download a decryptor developed by Emsisoft on GitHub.

In the meantime, the battle between PewDiePie and T-Series is happily raging. Last week T-Series was briefly ahead of PewDiePie, after which the Swede overtaken the canal again. Currently Kjellberg has 91.108.408 subscribers and T-Series with 91.214.749 a lot more.