It began as a joke amongst fans of YouTube streamer PewDiePie. The Subscribe to PewDiePie movement was meant to help the YouTuber react 100,000,000 subscribers; however, things have taken an ugly turn. People have created different types of malware to infect people’s systems until that subscriber goal is met.
The first is known as PewCrypt. This is a Java-based ransomware that encrypts the files on your PC which can be recovered at a later date. A previous version of ransomware centered around the YouTuber that appeared last December locked your files without any method of recovering them so they were lost forever. With PewCrypt, you cannot purchase a decryption key. Instead, you have to wait until PewDiePie reaches his 100 million subscriber goal before you are allowed to decrypt any of your affected files.
Another type of malware circulating around is known simply as PewDiePie Ransomware. It has been described as a poorly-written version of the ShellLocker ransomware. This ransomware results in the permanent locking of files.
The author of PewCrypt, after realizing the consequences of his actions, released the source code for the ransomware to GitHub along with the command-line-based decryption tool. Emisoft has also released a decrypter app for PewCrypt.
In the case your system is infected with PewCrypt, you can get the decrypter app here: https://decrypter.emsisoft.com/pewcrypt
Source: Fossbytes
