Decrypter now available for “PewDiePie” ransomware

If the name PewDiePie rings a bell, that’s because it’s the screen name of the most subscribed YouTuber on the Internet, with well over 90 million subscribers.

PewDiePie is apparently locked in a tight battle with another YouTube channel – T-Series – for the most followed channel. T-Series is – at the time of writing – a few thousands behind PewDiePie.

While this should be a light-hearted battle for YouTube’s number one spot, many PewDiePie fans are apparently taking it way too seriously, and some have released PewDiePie themed ransomware over the last few months aimed at forcing others to subscribe to his channel.

Ransomware is that nasty malware that infects a device and encrypts all the files on it, including photos, videos, text documents and so forth. It leaves the important operating system files alone so the user can still use their device, but they’ve lost all their files. Ransomware then, usually, demands payment for the decryption key so the victim can get their files back.

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Two ransomware strains were set out into the wild, one in December 2018 and the other in January 2019. The second, PewCrypt, was the smarter of the two, and fully encrypted files and wouldn’t provide any decryption keys until the PewDiePie channel reached 100 million subscribers before the T-Series channel. If it didn’t, the ransomware claimed the files would be lost forever.

That was until recently, when the author of the ransomware, presumably worried about, you know, serious jail time, released the source code for the ransomware online. This allowed security companies to produce decryption software, and security company Emsisoft released their tool this week which you can get here.