MALWARE FAMILY

KadNap

Internal ID: elf.kadnap

aliases

Last seen:Mar 17, 2026

Intelligence Profile

According to Black Lotus Labs, KadNap primarily targets Asus routers, conscripting them into a botnet that proxies malicious traffic. It employs a custom version of the Kademlia Distributed Hash Table (DHT) protocol, which is used to conceal the IP address of their infrastructure within a peer-to-peer system to evade traditional network monitoring.

Threat Analysis

KadNap is a malware family tracked by threat intelligence researchers and catalogued in the Malpedia dataset. It represents a distinct malicious software lineage with identifiable code characteristics, behaviors, and victimology.

External References

→https://blog.lumen.com/silence-of-the-hops-the-kadnap-botnet/

Quick Facts

TypeMalware Family

Aliases1

Also Known As

elf.kadnap

External Intelligence

Malpedia: elf.kadnap

Research Links

MITRE ATT&CK VirusTotal Google (news) Twitter/X search

Data sourced from Malpedia, Ransomware.live, RansomLook, and CTIWATCH OSINT collection. Actor attribution is based on available intelligence and may be incomplete.

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