Back in April, one of my QNAP network access storage (NAS) devices was subject to a ransomeware attack.  The cause was identified as a vulnerability in the built in media streaming application.

The company (QNAP) acknowledged the issue and very quickly fixed the flaw and issued a firmware update including enhanced malware detection and removal.

Nice try

They also disabled the old media ware software on all devices using their cloud (myqnapcloud.) in an attempt to deter the virus from infecting machines it had not got to yet.

For me the good news /bad news was one of my devices was not protected in time but the other largely was with only one file impacted (which I had a copy of elsewhere).

For the other device however basically all the user files were encrypted.  I did not purchase the encryption key (about $500 in bit coin) but rather decided to wait and see if a recovery approach would be devised by someone.

QNAP comes through

I recently contacted QNAP support because I found on the web they had developed a recovery process which they would run for you remotely if desired.

Unfortunately after several tries we could not get a stable remote access to my device so I just decided to follow the instructions and attempt recovery myself.

I was able to recover about 70% of the files and many others I had copies of on other drives.  Bottom line I was able to recover the majority of my lost data as well as taking the opportunity to clean-up  my data storage overall.

Moral to the story, the evil hackers can be defeated although I understand it is estimated they made almost half a million of the attack from those that did pay.