Why a Hacker Exploited Printers to Make PewDiePie Propaganda

By now, you’ve probably heard of PewDiePie, a Swedish comedian and video game commentator who has been the most followed creator on YouTube for years. A self-described “huge” PewDiePie fan and university student says they exploited tens of thousands of internet-connected printers earlier this week to spit out a message telling people, in part, “PewDiePie is in trouble and he needs your help to defeat T-Series!” The incident was first reported by The Verge. The hacker says he crafted a list of over 800,000 vulnerable printers, but they only targeted 50,000 in order to “test if this would actually work.” They said they witnessed some errors, but that they believe around 48,000 printers were affected. In 2017, a self-described “pissed off high school student” said they hacked more than 150,000 printers using open ports. But that hasn’t always been the case: In 2016, hacker Andrew Auernheimer, also known as weev, exploited printers to print racist and anti-Semitic flyers, also by using open ports.