Fans of YouTuber PewDiePie have released two strains of ransomware in the latest attempt to get people to subscribe to the channel and beat rival T-Series for the most popular channel on the video streaming service.

For those who have missed the pop-culture phenomenon, Felix “PewDiePie” Kjellberg (pictured) has long been the most popular YouTube channel by number of subscribers. But in the last few months, T-Series, a YouTube channel that specializes in Indian music, has quickly caught up.

Many of the efforts by fans to gain more subscribers to the channel have been fairly harmless before now, including hacked printers made to print out flyers telling people to subscribe to PewDiePie and a hack of Chromecasts, smart televisions and Google Home devices to display a similar subscription message.

The ransomware, however, is certainly not harmless. One strain, a modified version of ShellLocker ransomware simply called “PieDiePie ransomware,” locks files and demands that victims subscribe to PewDiePie if they wanted their information back. However, the poorly written strain never saves or uploads the encryption keys, resulting in files being unable to be retrieved, even when victims subscribe.

The second strain of ransomware, called PewCrypt, locks away users’ files indefinitely until PewDiePie gains 100 million subscribers. Worse still, the variant threatens to delete the user’s data permanently if T-Series were to hit the 100 million subscriber milestone first.

The good news for those who are infected with PewCrypt is that they can retrieve their files. Security firm Emsisoft Ltd. has released a decryptor for that.

“The creator seems to have got cold feet and released a command line decryptor,” a spokesperson for the company told SiliconANGLE. “We simply extracted and converted the private key to make a GUI decryptor — easier for the victim, that way.” The decryptor is available for free here. 

Meanwhile, the battle between PewDiePie and T-Series is ongoing. Despite T-Series having briefly overtaken PewDiePie during the week, PewDiePie is back in the lead with 91.2 million subscribers as of 10:30 p.m. EDT, according to FlareTV, just over T-Series’ 91.186 million.

Photo: PewDiePie/YouTube; image: Emsisoft