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WD My Book users wake up to find their data deleted

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Re: WD My Book users wake up to find their data deleted

#92

It may sound a little unfair, but the MyBook has been on my personal Ban List for 14 years now. (has it been that long ?) I don't know if they still do this, but there was a time their NAS would refuse to allow access to MP3 files over a network. To fight piracy. https://www.theregister.com/2007/12/07/western_digital_drm_c... (Was www.wired.com/2007/12/western-digital)

Maybe the blank CD-R "tax"/ contribution-to-the-riaa didn't have to be paid if it couldn't host media files covered by that agreement? But I have no idea if they would've even had to pay that in the first place on these devices.

I had totally forgotten about those, and the corollary “I’ve already been taxed on them so pirate away!” argument.

Re: WD My Book users wake up to find their data deleted

#93
I just bought a large external hard drive for exactly this reason in case things fail. I did not use this live feature but I feel much better with an offline copy of my data safe. This lesson has been played time and time again when will people learn? You need to be in physical possession of your data and if it is truly critical you better have a second copy kept in another location in case of theft or fire.

Re: WD My Book users wake up to find their data deleted

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cloud backups are likely going to be more reliable I've seen enough HackerNews articles: 1. My account got deleted and I can't find a human to talk to and all my pictures going back 20 years are gone! 2. A hacker guessed my password and deleted my online presence! It's all gone! 3. My storage provider went bust and all my stuff is gone!

Well I guess you should have both. That’s the point point right? Redundancy?

[deleted]

Re: WD My Book users wake up to find their data deleted

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cloud backups are likely going to be more reliable I've seen enough HackerNews articles: 1. My account got deleted and I can't find a human to talk to and all my pictures going back 20 years are gone! 2. A hacker guessed my password and deleted my online presence! It's all gone! 3. My storage provider went bust and all my stuff is gone!

If my cloud backup backend provider cancels my account, my backup software will quickly complain. There will be a window of exposure, but I can act quickly. If my backup harddrive is in the same house as my main storage and my house burns down, I'm fucked. If I'm fancy, I may have multiple backend storage providers, too. Lot easier to do that then to have multiple houses. I wanted to use a safe deposit box in the pas…

I haven't yet implemented it but perhaps a reciprocal syncthing arrangement with an IT knowledgeable friend?

Re: WD My Book users wake up to find their data deleted

#97

Of course they issue a CYA about their cloud systems not being compromised, but then bury the fact that other systems were compromised by using the passive voice when they point to "threat actors". I'm assuming the My Books phone home in some way to facilitate file access over the internet. If so, that WD system got cracked. That seems more likely since-- at least for my ISP and I'm guessing most home ISPs-- don't ex…

> Anyone know if NAT configs are required to use the feature that let's you access files from anywhere?

I doubt it. The specs list UPnP support. DLNA on some versions too. No consumer device is going to expect the average punter to mess with NAT.

Re: WD My Book users wake up to find their data deleted

#98
post #2

Very interested to see what the root cause ends up being - this is mind bogglingly bad. I know several people who use these devices because of their simplicity, and they’d be devastated. I run a FreeNAS setup at home on an HP MicroServer. From time to time, I lament the amount of time I’ve spent over the years maintaining it, and after a recent drive failure (and wishing for more performance), I started considering c…

My guess is someone figured out how to bounce commands off WD command server (customer reps helping people reset their devices) and they are spamming customer ids. Either that or these devices have unique ports on the WAN with a 0-day but that would take a lot more effort to exploit.

Re: WD My Book users wake up to find their data deleted

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bit rot Hard disk drives go on sale regularly. I replace mine usually once a year or so. They're not expensive relative to the loss of the data. I just bought a 500G SSD drive on sale for $60.

Do people buy SSDs for backup purposes? Sure it's fast, but isn't it better to get 6x the storage for the same price?

I've read that SSDs are also generally more susceptible to data degradation earlier than spinning rust, although I'm not sure how true that is. Wikipedia[0] says:

- Solid-state media...store data using electrical charges, which can slowly leak away due to imperfect insulation.

- Magnetic media...may experience data decay as bits lose their magnetic orientation. Periodic refreshing by rewriting the data can alleviate this problem. In warm/humid conditions these media, especially those poorly protected against ambient air, are prone to the physical decomposition of the storage medium.

In either case, only ZFS/Btrfs/ReFS seem to implement strategies to deal with data corruption. Kinda sad that Apple recently released a new FS and didn't bother to address this.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation

Re: WD My Book users wake up to find their data deleted

#100

Discontinued in 2015, so no security patches. That's the problem with all of these purpose built IoT devices, a general lack of security updates even when they're still supported, and of course no chance at all if 6 months or a year after you buy it they decide to drop the product line.

"Western Digital has determined that some My Book Live devices are being compromised by malicious software. In some cases, this compromise has led to a factory reset that appears to erase all data on the device. The My Book Live device received its final firmware update in 2015. We understand that our customers’ data is very important. At this time, we recommend you disconnect your My Book Live from the Internet to protect your data on the device. We are actively investigating and we will provide updates to this thread when they are available."

I'm using a WD My Cloud for non-essential data. I was wondering if my unit would be affected as well. As far as I can tell, the latest firmware update completed January 01, 2020. I'm safe for now but I better build something more robust.

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