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As ransomware attack techniques continue to evolve, the threats facing enterprises are no longer limited to “system vulnerabilities”. A growing number of real-world cases show that attackers often obtain legitimate administrative privileges through credential theft, internal breaches, or lateral movement, and then launch devastating attacks across the entire IT environment.
The recently observed Qilin ransomware campaigns clearly represent this new generation of attack patterns.
When “Legitimate Privileges” Become the Biggest Security Gap
In this real-world cybersecurity incident, attackers successfully obtained high-privilege accounts within the enterprise environment and used these “legitimate credentials” to access multiple systems.
When administrative privileges fall into the hands of attackers, it means:
- Access controls no longer serve as a barrier
- Traditional antivirus and firewalls struggle to function effectively
- Core enterprise systems and data are exposed to full-scale risk
Even if the systems themselves have no vulnerabilities, a compromised account can lead to the total collapse of the entire security posture.
NAS Under Attack: Services and Data Fully Affected
In this incident, a NAS at a U.S. educational institution was also targeted.
After gaining administrative privileges, the attackers carried out destructive operations on the NAS’s system and services, resulting in:
- Encryption of system and application data
- Impact on containerized and virtualized environments
- Disruption of multiple critical services
The entire NAS came to a near standstill, and on the surface, it appeared that enterprise data was at risk of a complete compromise.
Key Difference: Immutable Backups Remained Uncompromised
However, the real turning point lay in the backup architecture.
In this environment, the institution’s IT team had proactively deployed QuObjects as the object storage platform for VM backups and enabled Object Lock, supporting a WORM (Write Once, Read Many) immutable storage mechanism.
This design delivered a decisive protective effect:
- Even if attackers obtained the highest system privileges
- Even if most services on the NAS had been encrypted
- The backup data already written to QuObjects could not be deleted, modified, or encrypted
All critical VM backup data was preserved intact and secure.
Rapid Recovery: Truly Avoiding Ransom Payments and Operational Downtime
Following the incident, the institution only needed to:
- Redeploy the NAS system and related services
- Reconnect QuObjects to the existing Object Lock (WORM) data
- Enabling rapid retrieval of full backups and complete system recovery
No ransom was paid, and no prolonged operational downtime was incurred.
Key Takeaways from This Case
In the context of next-generation ransomware attacks, what truly safeguards a company’s lifeline in the worst-case scenario is not a single security device, but:
- An immutable backup architecture
- Object storage design that adheres to Object Lock and WORM principles
- A data line of defense that remains unbreachable, even if administrative privileges are compromised
Backups cannot merely exist; they must be “undeletable and unencryptable.”
Truly reliable backups must remain effective even in the worst-case scenario.
Truly Reliable Backups Must Remain Effective Even in the Worst-Case Scenario
In today’s ransomware landscape, enterprises must face a hard reality:
accounts can be stolen, privileges can be compromised, and attacks often originate from “legitimate identities.”
Therefore, what truly safeguards a company’s lifeline at critical moments is not a single security tool, but a backup architecture that remains unbreachable, even when the highest privileges are compromised.
Through QuObjects Object Lock (WORM), enterprises can ensure that critical backup data cannot be deleted, modified, or encrypted during its retention period, making backups the final and most reliable line of defense against ransomware attacks.
The value of a backup lies not in “whether it can be restored”, but in “whether it has been successfully preserved”.
This is precisely the core protective capability that QNAP QuObjects provides for enterprises in the era of ransomware.
