PewDiePie ransomware forces people to subscribe to his YouTube channel – or risk losing their data

'If T-Series beats PewDiePie the private key will be deleted and your files gone forever,' the ransom note states

PewDiePie has once again attracted controversy, after fans of the popular YouTuber released ransomware designed to lock people's data until his subscriber count hits 100 million.

The release of the ransomware comes amid the ongoing battle between PewDiePie, whose real name is Felix Kjelberg, and Indian music channel T-Series.

"Subscribe to PewDiePie," stated the ransom note that accompanied the Pewcrypt ransomware. "If T-Series beats PewDiePie the private key will be deleted and your files gone forever!"

Ransomware is usually created to generate money for the cyber criminals behind it, who typically demand a sum of the semi-anonymous cryptocurrency bitcoin for the malware to be removed.

The Pewcrypt variant, however, appears to be designed exclusively to generate additional subscribers for PewDiePie's YouTube channel.

"Initially, the creator stated in the ransom note that the decryption would not be released unless PewDiePie reached 100 million subscribers, meaning if that didn't happen then people would have no means of decrypting their data," Michael Gillespie, a researcher at cyber security firm Emsisoft, told The Independent.

"Additionally, using the author's decryption would require that people trust the person who initially infected them to not further infect them with more malware."

A decryption tool for PewCrypt has been developed and released by Emsisoft, allowing victims to take back control of any compromised data.

Less than 15,000 subscribers currently separate the two channels, with T-Series currently in the lead.

Fans of the Swedish vlogger have gone to increasingly extreme measuress to keep PewDiePie the most-subscribed-to channel on YouTube.

In December 2018, cyber vandals defaced a section of the Wall Street Journal website with a message of support for PewDiePie.

In a separate incident hackers also took over thousands of printers and forced them to print messages calling for people to subscribe to his channel.

Earlier this month PewDiePie was forced to condemn fans for vandalising a World War II memorial in New York, which was tagged with the graffiti "Subscribe to PewDiePie".