Two hackers just took over thousands of Chromecast devices to raise awareness about an old security flaw dubbed “Cast Hack.”
Hacker Giraffe and J3ws3r, the two hackers, forced thousands of Chromecasts to show a pop-up notice that told the devices’ owners their router was misconfigured. They also took the opportunity to invite those people to subscribe to Pewdiepie, one of the most popular Youtubers in the world.
Their website also counts the number of exposed devices, which sits at 72,341, and advises Chromecast and Google Home owners to disable UPnP on their router and stop forwarding ports 8008/8443/8009.
It’s good advice for anyone concerned about the security of their devices.
Also read: ✍Google Home and Chromecast Devices Could Let Attackers Know Your Location✍According to them, the CastHack can “remotely play media on your device, rename your device, factory reset or reboot the device, force it to forget all wifi networks, force it to pair to a new bluetooth speaker/wifi point, and so on.”
“This is not an issue with Chromecast specifically, but is rather the result of router settings that make smart devices, including Chromecast, publicly reachable,” a Google spokesperson told Techcrunch.
This is also not the first time these shenanigans happen: a month ago, the same hackers hijacked unsecured printers and made them print out promos for Pewdiepie.
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