T Series vs Pewdiepie war gets ugly after someone hacks printers worldwide

A hacker got into printers worldwide asking all to subscribe to Pewdiepie and unsubscribe from T Series. Nearly 1500 printers were allegedly affected in India.

The war between T Series and Pewdiepie for YouTube's most followed channel got ugly on Friday after a hacker caused office printers worldwide to spew out a message asking everyone to subscribe to the Swedish YouTuber's channel. 

Many took to Twitter to report that their printers have been hacked. 

Everyone received the following message: “PewDiePie is in trouble and he needs your help to defeat T-Series”. 

The printout then goes on to explain what's happening and “what to do” to help Pewdiepie win.

@pewdiepie I work in IT around Brighton and our Printers are being hacked....is this your propaganda? pic.twitter.com/xIRCGEQoNB — Georgia Barton (@georgia_bizzle) November 29, 2018

Why are local printers being hacked for this pic.twitter.com/fAnNTIp6ds — madison. (@maddybenavente1) November 29, 2018

So this just randomly printed on one of our work printers. I think @pewdiepie has hacked our systems. pic.twitter.com/wSG9cprJ4s — Dr.Moxmo (@Dr_Moxmo) November 29, 2018

@pewdiepie Some hacker is using unsecured work printers to print out this message pic.twitter.com/t701kfBwIP — Shahmeer Khan (@Shahmee65121534) November 30, 2018

After some time, a person going by the Twitter username “TheHackerGiraffe” claimed responsibility for it. In a series of Tweets, the person explained how the hack was pulled off, later adding that our printers are unprotected.

Here is how the entire #pewdiepie printer hack went down:

1. I was bored after playing Destiny 2 for a continous 4 hours, and decided I wanted to hack something. So I thought of any vulnerable protocols I could find on shodan

(1/) — TheHackerGiraffe (@HackerGiraffe) December 1, 2018

“Spread the word with your friends about printers and printer security! This is actually a scary matter,” read a Twitter post from the person claiming to be behind the prank. 

Nearly 1500 of the printers were in India were affected, he claimed. 

Later, Pewdiepie tweeted “Desperate times calls for desperate measures.”

Desperate times calls for desperate measures.. https://t.co/ltWSh9RPOs

— ƿ૯ωძɿ૯ƿɿ૯ (@pewdiepie) November 30, 2018

For the uninformed, our Indian record label T-Series and PewDiePie are battling it out on YouTube for the crown of most-subscribed or followed channel. 

One-man Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie, known for his game commentary and pranks, held the mantle for a few years now. And he's not keen to lose out so soon, employing every tactic possible to stop to T Series' meteoric rise. 

PewDiePie's real name is Felix Kjellberg. He and his fellows, which includes another popular YouTuber Mr Beast, have bought billboards, appeared on ads and much more. All to stop T Series. Read more here. 

T Series has been on the music scene since the 1980s and is a household name in India. It has several popular artists to its credit.

It launched on YouTube in 2011, which now accounts for nearly 25 per cent of its sales – about $100 million. 

Many have compared its meteoric rise to Vevo's growth on YouTube. T Series's subscribers shot from some 30 million earlier this year to over 72 million, propelled by India's game-changing mobile and data service penetration.

The gap between the two channels is narrowing. As of filing this copy, T Series was mere 1.13 lakh subscribers behind.

Given T Series reach and the popularity of artists featured on the channel, it could well be a child's game for the Indian record label.