Hacker have once again hacked printers around the world to print this:
The first “attack” was carried out last month, when one member of the hacking group claimed to have forced 50,000 printers to create posters supporting PewDiePie. The latest incident again urges support for the YouTuber, but also calls on victims to improve their security. The original hacker anonymously told the BBC “I’ve been trying to show that ‘hacking’ isn’t a game or toy, it can have serious real-life consequences”.
He explained how you can easily burn out the chips on these devices by forcing them to process data: “These chips have a limited lifetime of ‘writes’, If you keep the loop on enough, the chip will fry and the printer will no longer function.”
My Dymo printer just told me that I need to subscribe to @pewdiepie but I'm already a subscriber 😂 pic.twitter.com/Hm7veeyEiO
— Jéssica Llinares (@Thrillka) December 15, 2018
This time the hackers claim to have printed out the message on more than 100,000 machines, and people from countries including the UK, US, Argentina, Spain, Australia and Chile have posted pictures on social media of the latest print-outs.
On a more serious note, these seemingly harmless exploits could be used for much more malicious purposes. Hackers could recklessly destroy these devices or hold them hostage until you pay a ransom, so I can’t stress enough how important it is to keep security software up to date, and be careful what you connect your devices to.
https://twitter.com/HackerGiraffe/status/1068714506770149376
