QNAP, a Taiwan-based hardware vendor, has published a security advisory warning about a new malware threat. The malware named Dovecat is actively targeting Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices. It uses local resources of the infected systems to mine cryptocurrency without users’ knowledge. According to analysis, QNAP NAS can become infected when they are connected to the Internet with weak user passwords.The security advisory was released after the company started receiving reports from its users, last year, concerning two unknown processes (dovecat and dedpma). Both processes were consuming the device’s memory and running non-stop to mine cryptocurrency, later identified as Dovecat.
