Swedish YouTube vlogger, PewDiePie, is reported to have inspired some of his 77 million followers to hack 50,000 printers to promote his YouTube channel, and to draw attention to vulnerabilities in their printer firmware that could even be exploited by hackers to ‘fry’ a printer chip.

Messages Sent Through Printers

The vlogger, PewDiePie, primarily wanted to make a point that popular printer firmware has vulnerabilities in it that could leave people open to hacks that could disable and even permanently damage their printer. Also, there is the risk that a printer hack could enable attackers to see and alter potentially sensitive information as it’s printed out.

Thankfully for printer owners, the chosen method of raising awareness by some followers of PewDiePie was to send messages through their printers.  The messages, in this case, asked people to subscribe to PewDiePie’s YouTube channel and asked them to unsubscribe from a rival channel called T-Series.

Could ‘Fry’ The Printer Chip

According to PewDiePie, one of the most alarming risks that people could face thanks to vulnerabilities in the printer firmware is hackers forcing a stream of data to be continuously written by the printer’s chips. Since the chips only have a limited lifespan of ‘writes’, keeping them on such a continuous loop for long enough could overload and ‘fry’ the printer chip, thereby stopping the printer from working altogether.  This would most likely require the victim to purchase a new printer.

Unsubstantiated

Although it has been claimed that followers of PewDiePie have caused 100,000 machines to print out the message, this figure has not been verified, and currently, there is only anecdotal evidence in the form of some Twitter posts from alleged victims in the UK, US, South America, Spain and Australia.  There have, thankfully, been no reports of any printer chips being fried as yet.

Example

One example of how printers can be compromised dates from early 2017 when a hacker named Stackoverflowin was able to take control of more than 150,000 printers manufactured by HP, Brother, Epson, Canon, Lexmark and Minolta, and ordered them to print out a message.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This may be a publicity stunt by a YouTube vlogger that is likely to expand the number of his followers, but it appears to have had a serious point about a security vulnerability that could affect your business or home printer. Back in August, for example, it was discovered that hundreds of HP inkjet printer models were in desperate need of firmware patches, and this latest stunt may help to prompt enough questions from printer owners to motivate printer manufacturers to take another look at their firmware, and for printer owners to seek out patches that may already be in existence.