Ransomware Attack on the QNAP Device: A Case Study

In today’s world, cloud services and NAS devices are gaining progressively more attention. Both private users and large organizations use NAS servers to create personal clouds. Because of this trend, cybercriminals are targeting many ransomware attacks on NAS devices. In many cases, successful attacks lead to permanent loss of valuable data. In this paper, we wanted to take a closer look at such kind of attack in order to establish the vulnerabilities used by cybercriminals in real-case scenarios. The topic of NAS devices being targeted by ransomware software is rarely touched upon, despite it becoming more and more of a problem nowadays. Analyzing a NAS device affected by ransomware could reveal a lot of valuable information. In this paper, we briefly describe the real attack on the QNAP device we have been working on. Carried-out studies allowed us to find a number of exemplary vulnerabilities present on the device in question. As a result, we were also able to provide some simple precautions that can allow users to avoid ransomware attacks in the future.