Printers connected to the Internet across the world have been hacked to print a message urging people to subscribe to PewDiePie’s YouTube channel.



@pewdiepie why your people gotta hack my job printer breh?? pic.twitter.com/hSCWqyD9Us — Matt (@thefreeman28989) November 29, 2018



@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



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



The recent #PewDiePie hack exposed printers as a point of weakness for many business systems. It's important to check you are not open to external access and if you have been hacked notify your Cyber Insurer immediately: https://t.co/l7Rpf5ir7i #CyberSecurity #ComputerSecurityDay pic.twitter.com/RmVSYFGLCe — Erimus Insurance (@ErimusIB) November 30, 2018

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Reported by The Verge , this attack appears to be the work of @HackerGiraffe (a Twitter account that was just opened yesterday) who claims the relatively harmless act was carried out in order to raise awareness about a major hole in printer security.The message sent to an alleged 50,000 printers calls for recipients to unsubscribe from T-Series, an Indian YouTube channel that is close to becoming the most subscribed channel on the platform, and subscribe to the current frontrunner PewDiePie’s channel instead. It also suggests reciepents subscribe to two other channels, "delete TikTok,” smile, and to fix the exposed printer.Speaking with The Verge, The Hacker Giraffe said he found 800,000 susceptible printers through an online repository, and is concerned about the vulnerability, saying “People underestimate how easy a malicious hacker could have used a vulnerability like this to cause major havoc. Hackers could have stolen files, installed malware, caused physical damage to the printers and even use the printer as a foothold into the inner network. The most horrifying part is: I never considered hacking printers before, the whole learning, downloading and scripting process took no more than 30 minutes.”YouTuber Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg has been in and out of the news: last year, his use of a racial slur during a livestream caused some major backlash . Two years prior, he became the first YouTube personality to reach 10 billion views , and currently has 72.6 million subscribers.

Colin Stevens is a news writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter