Printer hackers strike again to help PewDiePie grow his subscriber lead over T-Series

Hackers have used their abilities to manipulate printers as a way to boost the subscriber count of prominent YouTuber Felix ‘PewDiePie’ Kjellberg.

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For months now, PewDiePie has been involved with Bollywood YouTube channel T-Series in a well-documented race to see which will end up as the most subscribed to on YouTube. 

As the race drags on, more and more people are turning to extreme measures to try and help PewDiePie maintain his position on top and fend off T-Series’ relentless push. 

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One of those extreme methods has been the remote hacking of printers around the world and forcing them to print message that instruct the users to subscribe to PewDiePie on YouTube.

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The latest of these cyber attacks came to light on December 15, with the hackers responsible claiming that they managed to get to over 100,000 machines worldwide and manipulate them to print this out.

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While the claims have yet to be verified, people from all over the world have reported and posted pictures of them receiving the message through their printer, including from the US, UK, Argentina, Spain, Australia, and Chile.

Judging by the variety in the pictures that are circulating on social media, it appears that the hackers do not discriminate which printers they hack, having attacked machines located in offices, businesses, and homes. 

Interestingly enough, this is the second wave of printer hacking that has occurred in favor of PewDiePie, with the first taking place towards the early days of December.

In that instance, an estimated 50,000 printers were breached and forced to spew out instructions to subscribe to the famous YouTuber, and the printed message from then appears to have remained identical to the ones from this second wave of hacks. 

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This is the latest development in what has been a favorable series of events for PewDiePie, who received a massive boost earlier on December 16 when a YouTube subscriber purge of bot accounts cost T-Series over 300,000 subs, while PewDiePie lost only 80,000. 

As of right now, according to a live counter on YouTube, he sits at just over 77.1 million subs, while T-Series is at just over 75.7 million, having fallen behind drastically after coming very close to taking the lead. 

Will these hackers’ breach of printers prevent T-Series from overtaking PewDiePie, probably not, as it seems inevitable that the Swede will eventually lose his top spot.

However, statistical projections predicted that to have taken place weeks ago, and he continues to defy the odds thanks to huge, last-second boosts such as this latest wave of hacks.

Source – BBC