Someone Hacked 50,000 Printers to Promote PewDiePie YouTube Channel

This may sound crazy, but it’s true!

The war for "most-subscribed Youtube channel" crown between T-Series and PewDiePie just took an interesting turn after a hacker yesterday hijacked more than 50,000 internet-connected printers worldwide to print out flyers asking everyone to subscribe to PewDiePie YouTube channel.

PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjellberg, is a famous YouTuber from Sweden known for his game commentary and pranks and has had the most subscribers on YouTube since 2013.

However, the channel owned by Bollywood record label T-Series has been catching up in recent months, and now both are hovering around 72.5 million YouTube subscribers.

From this fear that PewDiePie won't remain the number one most-subscribed YouTuber in the world, an anonymous hacker (probably his die-hard fan) with the Twitter username "TheHackerGiraffe" came up with a hackish idea.

Read more

500 Million Marriott Guest Records Stolen in Starwood Data Breach

The world's biggest hotel chain Marriott International today disclosed that unknown hackers compromised guest reservation database its subsidiary Starwood hotels and walked away with personal details of about 500 million guests.

Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide was acquired by Marriott International for $13 billion in 2016. The brand includes St. Regis, Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, W Hotels, Westin Hotels & Resorts, Aloft Hotels, Tribute Portfolio, Element Hotels, Le Méridien Hotels & Resorts, The Luxury Collection, Four Points by Sheraton and Design Hotels.

The incident is believed to be one of the largest data breaches in history, behind 2016 Yahoo hacking in which nearly 3 billion user accounts were stolen.

The breach of Starwood properties has been happening since 2014 after an "unauthorized party" managed to gain unauthorized access to the Starwood's guest reservation database, and had copied and encrypted the information.

Marriott discovered the breach on September 8 this year after it received an alert from an internal security tool "regarding an attempt to access the Starwood guest reservation database in the United States."

On November 19, the investigation into the incident revealed that there was unauthorized access to the database, containing "guest information relating to reservations at Starwood properties on or before September 10, 2018."

The stolen hotel database contains sensitive personal information of nearly 327 million guests, including their names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth, genders, arrival and departure information, reservation date, and communication preferences.

What's worrisome? For some users, stolen data also includes payment card numbers and payment card expiration dates.

Read more

Dell Resets All Customers' Passwords After Potential Security Breach

Multinational computer technology company Dell disclosed Wednesday that its online electronics marketplace experienced a "cybersecurity incident" earlier this month when an unknown group of hackers infiltrated its internal network.

On November 9, Dell detected and disrupted unauthorized activity on its network attempting to steal customer information, including their names, email addresses and hashed passwords.

According to the company, the initial investigation found no conclusive evidence that the hackers succeeded to extract any information, but as a countermeasure Dell has reset passwords for all accounts on Dell.com website whether the data had been stolen or not.

Dell did not share any information on how hackers managed to infiltrate its network at the first place or how many user accounts were affected, but the company did confirm that payment information and Social Security numbers were not targeted.

Read more