KadNap Malware Infects 14,000+ Edge Devices to Power Stealth Proxy Botnet
Mar 10, 2026
Malware / Network Security
Cybersecurity researchers have discovered a new malware called KadNap that's primarily targeting Asus routers to enlist them into a botnet for proxying malicious traffic. The malware, first detected in the wild in August 2025, has expanded to over 14,000 infected devices, with more than 60% of victims located in the U.S., according to the Black Lotus Labs team at Lumen. A lesser number of infections have been detected in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Russia, the U.K., Australia, Brazil, France, Italy, and Spain. "KadNap 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," the cybersecurity company said in a report shared with The Hacker News. Compromised nodes in the network leverage the DHT protocol to locate and connect with a command-and-control (C2) server, thereby making it resilient to detection and disrupt...