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WD My Book users wake up to find their data deleted

arstechnica.com

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

#481

Post by megous »

akie wrote: post #437
Legion wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the commenter was criticizing Linux. Seemed more a comment on the manufacturers who lazily slap these products together with minimal effort. Taking a free OS, sprinkling a thin layer of their software on top, and then abandoning their responsibility to maintain the full software stack being a common example of that minimal effort. So, yes, essentially you end up with a bunch of devices running vendor-sp…

I agree, but it also makes me consider what the role of software engineering (as a discipline) is in this disaster. Shouldn't we design systems that are hard to break by default ? Shouldn't the OS assume that terrible things are going to happen anyway, and provide protection from bad faith actors in case the OS is indeed left unpatched for 10 years while being fully exposed to the internet? Is it even possible to des…

Current mainline Linux still has support for the powerpc SoC in those drives. It may take a week for someone to prepare alternative firmware for the device, that is modern, uptodate and safer. U-Boot dropped the support in 2017.

So if anyone wants to support their 11 year old drive they can do so.

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

#482

Post by bayindirh »

cjg wrote: post #378
freeone3000 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue here is "end of life" is defined way too soon for portable hard drives. The mechanical parts have a 4% annual failure rate, or a half-life of 12.5 years. The software should be supported for that long.

I agree with your conclusion of increasing the length of support. But your half-life analysis isn't really the right choice. Hard drives tend to have a bath-tub failure rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve

Some of the WD MyBook Live systems have removable drives. This makes drive life irrelevant at least for these drives.

E.g.: Mybook Live Duo 8TB: https://productimages.hepsiburada.net/s/12/500/8922723713074...

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

#483

Post by gcbirzan »

ineedasername wrote: post #65

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…

Judging by the CVE they linked, you need local access. But, since it's a GET parameter, this could be a drive by attack where someone puts all the links to common home networks in a page and the browser just takes care of that (and there are ways to guess the local network). Though, judging by the number of people affected, it might be something else.

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

#484

Post by bayindirh »

throwawayboise wrote: post #297
freeone3000 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue here is "end of life" is defined way too soon for portable hard drives. The mechanical parts have a 4% annual failure rate, or a half-life of 12.5 years. The software should be supported for that long.

12 years? Typical business life of a computer is 5 years. Typical service/support agreement is 1-3 years. Try getting Apple to address a failed hard drive that's 12 years old. They'd laugh in your face.

What if the appliance has removable drives, so its life is much longer than the drives themselves?

e.g.: Live Duo 8TB: https://productimages.hepsiburada.net/s/12/500/8922723713074...

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

#485

Post by Havoc »

romwell wrote: post #3

There are two kinds of users: those who back up their data, and those who haven't experienced a data loss yet. This is your daily reminder that anything that's connected is not a backup . Yes, that includes the hard drive in your machine. For that matter, RAID is not a backup solution. Yes, that includes cloud sync (Dropbox/OneDrive/GDrive/etc) that propagates changes automatically. That's not backup. And that includ…

>(Dropbox/OneDrive/GDrive/etc) that propagates changes automatically. That's not backup.

Planning to go down this route except incremental instead of propagated

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

#486

Post by uni_rule »

hulitu wrote: post #467
cm2187 wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tracking and ads. Now that your TV menus have ads embedded, it’s a small leap from there to have to watch a commercial before you can start your washing machine

And a small leap from there to start your vibrating ring.

This prostate stimulation was bought to you by Geico

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

#487

Post by peterkelly »

akie wrote: post #437
Legion wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think the commenter was criticizing Linux. Seemed more a comment on the manufacturers who lazily slap these products together with minimal effort. Taking a free OS, sprinkling a thin layer of their software on top, and then abandoning their responsibility to maintain the full software stack being a common example of that minimal effort. So, yes, essentially you end up with a bunch of devices running vendor-sp…

I agree, but it also makes me consider what the role of software engineering (as a discipline) is in this disaster. Shouldn't we design systems that are hard to break by default ? Shouldn't the OS assume that terrible things are going to happen anyway, and provide protection from bad faith actors in case the OS is indeed left unpatched for 10 years while being fully exposed to the internet? Is it even possible to des…

You're correct that this would be very nice to have.

However this is a problem the industry has been struggling with for decades. It's simply not easy (and maybe not even possible) to achieve what you claimed "should" happen. Nobody knows how to produce bug-free software at scale.

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

#488

Post by kzrdude »

ghostly_s wrote: post #196
adolph wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The affected model here, known as My Book Live, uses an ethernet cable to connect to a local network. From there, users can remotely access their files and make configuration changes through Western Digital cloud infrastructure. Western Digital discontinued the My Book Live in 2015. The support forum thread was first reported by Bleeping Computer. The affected product is not a drive but a NAS solution. In terms of be…

Non-technical users don't care about this distinction. The name Western Digital is on both, and that name's brand value is destroyed forever if this indeed turns out to be irreversible. Though they could probably pivot to selling their drives in other's NAS devices without much difficulty if they want to remain in this market.

This is how non-technical users learn. How about.. don't have an internet connected drive? That's what I'll tell my family.

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

#489

Post by londons_explore »

For most users, this device wouldn't be directly exposed to the internet... it would be behind NAT on peoples home WiFi networks.

I find it hard to believe that even a critical unpatched vulnerability in the client device could be mass exploited like this.

I suspect the "cloud services" are somehow at fault...

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