As Synology explains in security advisories published two days after the flaws were demoed at Pwn2Own Ireland 2024 to hijack a Synology BeeStation BST150-4T device, the security flaws enable remote attackers to gain remote code execution as root on vulnerable NAS appliances exposed online.
“The vulnerability was initially discovered, within just a few hours, as a replacement for another Pwn2Own submission. The issue was disclosed to Synology immediately after demonstration, and within 48 hours a patch was made available which resolves the vulnerability,” Midnight Blue said.
From a different source:
Synology proactively sponsors and works with security researchers as part of product security initiatives. At this year’s Pwn2Own Ireland 2024 event, which took place in late October, we successfully discovered and resolved multiple security vulnerabilities.
While these vulnerabilities are not being exploited, we recommend all Synology device administrators immediately take action to secure their systems by updating due to the scope and severity of specific issues.
You will get compromised if you haven’t already. (Your device becomes part of a botnet)
If you don’t want new hardware use something actively supported like TrueNAS or regular Linux. You are asking for trouble. No hardening will protect you from out of date software with serious security holes.
Out of curiosity, how can I know if it’s already the case?
Connecting to the NAS only via VPN won’t be enough?
Yes, it will be enough if your services are not exposed via port forwarding , tailscale / zerotier are super convenient for this.
Honestly, if I were you I would start thinking in having a small computer just to act like a proxy / firewall of you synology, or even better, just run the applications on that computer and let the nas only serve files and data.
It is much easier to support, maintain and hardening a debain with a minimal intallation than nay synology box just because the amount of resources available to do so. In this easy way you could extent the life of your nas far beyond the end of life of the Sw