In recent days, a group of hackers (Hacker Giraffe) have managed to hijack up to 5,000 smart TVs and Chromecast devices in different locations worldwide. The hack forced the devices to play a video content in support of YouTube performer Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg, who has a close association with a range of different advertisers.
This was not the first hack to promote Kjellberg. There havebeen three reported incidents since November 2018, each seeking to promote PewDiePie. The earlier hacks were aimed at The Wall Street Journal and tens of thousands of printers. With The Wall Street Journal incident, the Verge reported how a sponsored post on the Journal’s affiliated site was edited by hackers to state that the news outlet would “like to apologize to pewdiepie” and that he had been “misrepresented” by the newspaper’s journalists.
For those unfamiliar with the ‘amusing’ YouTube performer, here he is in action:
According to Business Insider, the hackers stated intention was to draw attention to aware of security flaws in Google technology. While PewDiePie has not claimed any involvement, he has taken advantage of the publicity by commenting about each of the hacks on Twitter, where he has over 16 million followers.
Commenting on the hack, a Google spokesperson told TechCrunch: “We have received reports from users who have had an unauthorized video played on their TVs via a Chromecast device. This is not an issue with Chromecast specifically, but is rather the result of router settings that make smart devices, including Chromecast, publicly reachable.”
Certainly the hack will not harm PewDiePie’s mission to become the first YouTuber with 80 million followers. At the time of writing, he has 79,621,524 people signed up for his periodic witticisms.
