Thousands of Google Chromecast Devices Hijacked to Promote PewDiePie

LASER_oneXM

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A group of hackers has hijacked tens of thousands of Google's Chromecast streaming dongles, Google Home smart speakers and smart TVs with built-in Chromecast technology in recent weeks by exploiting a bug that's allegedly been ignored by Google for almost five years.

The attackers, who go by Twitter handles @HackerGiraffe and @j3ws3r, managed to hijack Chromecasts’ feeds and display a pop-up, spreading a security warning as well as controversial YouTube star PewDiePie propaganda.

The hackers are the same ones who hijacked more than 50,000 internet-connected printers worldwide late last year by exploiting vulnerable printers to print out flyers asking everyone to subscribe to PewDiePie YouTube channel.
 

upnorth

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HackerGiraffe out. Peace.

Yeah, I will have to disappear. Most probably for good this time. Who knows? Maybe I'll appear in 2 weeks on this same account again. No matter how much I write, I can't describe to you the mental stress and panic I'm going through right now. But I won't complain about that, because people will say I brought this on myself, I did those "hacks", I deserve the consequences. But I'm a human too, don't just throw away all my emotions because of my "hacker" personality. I don't deserve to be thrown under a bus for wanting to help people, but I guess that will put a smile on some people's faces. But I will say this. There are still so many devices exposed to the public internet. Routers with default passwords, telnet servers with bruteforcable passwords, open UPnP servers (GOD DAMN UPNP WILL BE THE DEATH OF US ALL), open SMB printers, freaking LGTV/Samsung/Sony TVs, so forth and so forth. I had a huge list of next targets, some even with ready PoCs and code. I guess that's all dead now.
HackerGiraffe out. Peace. - Pastebin.com
 

Vasudev

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You mean Pew? Why? It doesn't seem like he has anything to do with the hack...

But I agree that people shouldn't be force to subscribe if they don't want to.
He doesn't publicly denies it either and forces his followers to do bad things. If he's the top Youtuber with highest subscribers then he should act like one and not do cheap tricks.
He should make a video that people should subscribe willingly and not resort to hacks and other crap that tarnish his rep.
In my view, he must be banned for a week so that his followers gets their mind and soul in right place and face reality. Its just a warning or an example for other Youtubers. Hell, most of them start their videos by saying, Please subscribe to my channel and click on Notify icon for updated videos.
 
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Atlas147

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At least the popups were warning from the hackers, exposing the exploit, essentially forcing google to fix it. It could be much worse, it could have been blackmail, they could have posted links to phishing or malware sites. It's a shame that they didn't go through proper channels to send this to google, or if google was ignoring this exploit this would definitely be a huge wake up call to them that this is no laughing matter.
 
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Vasudev

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Nov 8, 2014
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At least the popups were warning from the hackers, exposing the exploit, essentially forcing google to fix it. It could be much worse, it could have been blackmail, they could have posted links to phishing or malware sites. It's a shame that they didn't go through proper channels to send this to google, or if google was ignoring this exploit this would definitely be a huge wake up call to them that this is no laughing matter.
For creating awareness is good for society but promoting an entity and organizing that hacks is complete madness.
 

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