PewDiePie fan hacks 50,000 printers to keep the channel no.1

PewDiePie and his supporters are fighting hard to keep him the No. 1 most-subscribed YouTuber on the platform.

In recent weeks, PewDiePie’s five-year reign as the YouTube creator with the most subscribers on the platform has been threatened by T-Series, an Indian entertainment company whose YouTube channel features music videos. On Sunday, T-Series’ subscriber count came within less than 50,000 of surpassing PewDiePie, the online handle of game-focused vlogger Felix Kjellberg.

One fan hacked 50,000 printers over the weekend to print out a message urging people to subscribe to his channel. The anonymous printer hacker, going by the name Hacker Giraffe, said they had identified 800,000 printers with open security settings and selected 50,000 to print out support for PewDiePie.

The pro-PewDiePie campaign took a bizarre turn when the hacker hacked printers to print out messages urging people to subscribe to PewDiePie and unsubscribe from T-Series.

In a video he posted himself about the fight to retain his crown, PewDiePie - whose real name is Felix Kjellberg - said he was enjoying the support.

"All of this support to keep me on top is so funny. I love it. Please keep it up," he said.

"But don't do anything illegal OK... because that will look bad on me."

"Hackers could have stolen files, installed malware, caused physical damage to the printers and even used the printer as a foothold into the inner network," they said.

"The most horrifying part is I never considered hacking printers before, the whole learning, downloading and scripting process took no more than 30 minutes", the Hacker told the technology news website TheVerge.

PewDiepie is a one-man show, its competitor T-Series is a Music Production company that has been operating since the 1980s. Both channels have more than 73 million subscribers, with PewDiePie currently in the lead by about 300,000.

In a video posted today, Kjellberg announced that he’s currently raising funds for Child Rights and You, an organization seeking to help children in India. Kjellberg’s charity efforts have raised more than £37,000 from over 2,250 donors, including Minecraft creator Markus Persson. Kjellberg plans to run a live stream tomorrow between 4PM–7PM GMT, wherein all proceeds will be donated to CRY.

Kjellberg, who is 29, has courted controversy with weird pranks. In 2017, he lost business deals with Disney’s Maker Studios and YouTube after staging an anti-Semitic “joke,” which Kjellberg apologized for, saying “I admit that the joke itself went too far.”