In the alert, it recommended customers act immediately to protect their data from malware attacks.Įditor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this guest author article are solely those of the contributor, and do not necessarily reflect those of Tripwire, Inc. QNAP issued a security advisory about the threat posed by the Muhstik ransomware against its NAS drives last week. Of course, prevention is always better than a cure. Anyone attempting to recover such a device from a Muhstik ransomware attack may wish to use Emsisoft’s tool instead. The Next Web reports that anti-virus firm Emsisoft tested Frömel’s decryption tool and found that it did not work properly on ARM-based QNAP devices. Yeah, i know it was not legal from me too but he used already hacked servers with several webshells on it… and im not the bad guy here :D Frömel himself acknowledges that what he did was against the law, although I would be surprised if he gets into any trouble over it: Revenge for killing her father, brother, friends, and Bob Resurrected. Hit in forehead/face beaten in 16 times with hatchet, head explodes with shotgun. “hey guys, good news for you all, bad news for me cause i paid already… maybe someone can give me a tip for my hard work ^^įurthermore, in an attempt to do some good–and deprive cybercriminals of income–Frömel has been seeking out Muhstik victims on Twitter and pointing them towards his decryption keys and instructions on how to recover their data.Īlthough many may feel tempted to applaud what Frömel did, hacking online criminals is not to be recommended. Cut in half at the waist with a hatchet and pulled out of skin. In a posting on the Bleeping Computing forum, Frömel admitted what he had done and posted a link to a Pastebin page where he had published the stolen keys as well as the decryption software. No, Frömel decided to hack the very people responsible for the attack.Īfter decrypting his own data, Frömel (who also calls himself “battleck” online) analyzed the ransomware that had infected his NAS drive, determined how it worked, “hacked back” and stole the criminal’s “whole database with keys.”įrom the sound of things, whoever was behind the Muhstik attack was more successful at writing ransomware than securing their own database from a web developer.

However, Frömel didn’t just put down the whole unpleasant episode to experience, vow to better protect his devices and employ a more reliable backup regime in future.

The victim then licks their wounds and hopefully learns something from the experience.Īnd that’s what happened to Tobias Frömel, a German developer and web designer who found himself paying a Bitcoin ransom of 670 Euros (US $735) after his QNAP NAS drive was hit by the Muhstik ransomware.

Someone gets infected by ransomware, and then they pay the ransom.

Arm of revenge hacked