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

What the *bleep* happened to PDP

[rsilvergun]

I was never a fan (not being a 13 year old girl when he broke) but somewhere along the line he pivoted to attracting the Alt-Right viewers and seemed to have gone off the deep end. Then again I was never a fan, maybe he always was like this. At any rate the fans he's attracting were already scary and that was before this and that mess in New Zealand.

Re:Format and reinstall

[GWXerog]

Could be worse, they could be watching late night television

Re:Sure, here you go

[AmiMoJo]

Because it's effective. Shining a light on people like her works. She has already been banned from half the world.

As much as I dislike banning people, the marketplace of ideas has failed to deal with the problem and she directly endangers people. Directly, as in she went to the Mediterranean and endangered shipping.