PewCrypt Ransomware Locks Users' Files and Won't Offer a Decryption Key Until - and Unless - PewDiePie's YouTube Channel Beats T-Series To Hit 100M Subscribers (zdnet.com)

The battle between PewDiePie, currently the most subscribed channel on YouTube, and T-Series, an Indian music label, continues to have strange repercussions. In recent months, as T-Series closes in on the gap to beat PewDiePie for the crown of the most subscribers on YouTube, alleged supporters of PewDiePie, in an unusual show of love, have hacked Chromecasts and printers to persuade victims to subscribe to PewDiePie's channel. Now ZDNet reports about a second strain of ransomware that is linked to PewDiePie. From the report: A second one appeared in January, and this was actually a fully functional ransomware strain. Called PewCrypt, this ransomware was coded in Java, and it encrypted users' files in the "proper" way, with a method of recovering files at a later date. The catch --you couldn't buy a decryption key, but instead, victims had to wait until PewDiePie gained over 100 million followers before being allowed to decrypt any of the encrypted files. At the time of writing, PewDiePie had around 90 million fans, meaning any victim would be in for a long wait before they could regain access to any of their files. Making matters worse, if T-Series got to 100 million subscribers before PewDiePie, then PewCrypt would delete the user's encryption key for good, leaving users without a way to recover their data.

While the ransomware was put together as a joke, sadly, it did infect a few users, ZDNet has learned. Its author eventually realized the world of trouble he'd get into if any of those victims filed complaints with authorities, and released the ransomware's source code on GitHub, along with a command-line-based decryption tool.

Comments

That's funny.

[Anonymous Coward]

Even funnier, I'm going to subscribe to T-Series now because of the retards that did this.

Re:Curiosity

[Anonymous Coward]

I am going to create ransomware tied to the removal of IWantMoreSpamPlease from slashdot. At what point should we hold IWantMoreSpamPlease responsible for my actions?

Re:Curiosity

[BringsApples]

At what point, if any, do we start holding PDP responsible for the actions of his fans?

Blame someone for the actions of others...? Should we blame Tide for the idiots that ate their Tide-pods?

No he did not

[SuperKendall]

I have seen on Twitter recently that PewDiePie is "alt-right", but as is usual with anything labeled "alt-right" that is Fake News.

What the hell have you seen that would make him alt-right? I don't watch his videos much but in the few I have seen there is zero political content of any kind. He does meme reviews for crying out loud!

I am pretty sure he has irked some people, these days anyone who is mad at you for anything simply labels you "alt-right". Don't propagate slander and lies.

P.S. if you don't realize the NZ shooter simply used his name to try as a kind of trolling, you've not been paying attention to what happened there.

Re:No he did not

[AbRASiON]

This poster is correct.

PDP, is quite harmless, but the media have it in for him since he's a nice big target and they hate steamers/ bloggers generally because they're eating the lunch of traditional gaming media.

PewDiePie encompass typical childish and nerds humour, taking the piss and messing around. There's very very little bad stuff here.

Man did the sjw types get a hard on for him and will not drop it. It's foolishness like this, when they're so blatantly wrong which actually weakens their cause as people start to question "if they're wrong about PDP, who else are they misrepresentating?"

Ultimately resulting in genuine bad actors getting less need criticism and or general distrust of the gaming and eventually, regular media.

Blackmail and extortion are quite illegal

[mark-t]

And using Youtube as a platform for payment doesn't change that.... I'd be surprised if this doesn't violate Youtube's TOS, and they can suspend or even terminate the account.

Re:Curiosity

[Rockoon]

You nailed it. The people going after PewDiePie are the same people going after Trump.

So, over half the people think its a witch hunt, because... well... yeah..

Re: Into the gaschamber with PewDiePie.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, nobody has managed to figure that out. h

Re:Into the gaschamber with PewDiePie.

[fleabay]

Learn what a Google is and quit being a dumb acting smartass.

Sure, here you go

[rsilvergun]

right here

For those who don't want to be bothered watching the video (or can't stand Cult of Dusty, which I can't really blame you for), PDP had a large number of alt-right personalities he was following and after the New Zealand shooter he emptied his followers list.

PDP may or may not actually believe any of the things the alt-right does. But he absolutely uses the movement and it's fans to his advantage. The controversial things he's done have almost exclusively appealed to the alt-right.

Like a lot of YouTubers he's figured out that the alt-right is a powerful engine for increasing views and ad revenue. But feeding off that isn't a one way street. He's normalizing and legitimizing the worst aspects of that community. And not just him. Other YouTubers like Sargon of Arkad, JonTron and Ben Shapiro are doing the same. Go look up some videos from Contrapoints, Three Arrows and hbomberguy on the subject. They're far better than anything I could type.

There's an entire engine on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook dedicated to exploiting angry, bitter, jobless young men for ad revenue and Pateron donations. I'm bloody sick of it. It's dangerous as fuck. Eventually a real demagogue will come along and organize them into brown shirts.

Re:Into the gaschamber with PewDiePie.

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

He's a Youtube star who is famous for being an empty-headed asshole.

And by 'star', I mean a racist, talentless hack, similar to Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton.

And by 'famous', I mean that some people within the dysfunctional 'community' known as Youtube recognize his name.

And by 'community', I mean a group of losers who clicked a button with his name by it.