More than 5,500 exposed smart TVs, Chromecast streamers and Google Home devices have been commandeered in the name of YouTube mega-star PewDiePie. Not that PewDiePie needs much help. He has the top-ranked channel with nearly 79.5 million subscribers.
Hacker Giraffe has remotely gained access to the TVs and smart devices of tens-of-thousands of users and displayed a pop-up that both warns of the exploit and links to a page listing the current number of affected devices.
In late 2018, hackers took over more than 50,000 printers to tell users to subscribe to PewDiePie, and now, they’re allegedly hacking Chromecast devices to issue a similar message.
The bug, dubbed CastHack, exploits a weakness in both Chromecast and the router it connects to. Some home routers have enabled Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), a networking standard that can be exploited in many ways.
While technically this latest hack is made possible via a security flaw in a users’ router, the exploit related to the Chromecast is one that has been known since the year the device launched.
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