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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

#192
post #128
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting - is it reliably between those times? What is the panic?

I’m about 3/4 certain that it’s between those times, and never at the top of the hour. Getting the exact panic would unfortunately mean to have to get it down from the shelf where it lives, and plugging it into a monitor to replicate. It doesn’t make it out of low-res text mode when it does. Most of the time, I’m usually in a rush to get it back up as my family wants lights and Plex to work normally. I do my best not…

If you get a chance to test, I'd recommend changing the time on the device and seeing if that makes a difference, should clue you in on if it's a software or environment issue.

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

#194
post #183

There’s a difference between MyBook and MyBook Live. The Live version (this article) is ONLY accessible over the cloud service for some reason. Even if you’re on the same LAN there’s no SMB, FTP or anything else. Only the cloud connection. The MyBook is a more normal NAS. Bought one of these for my dad few years ago without noticing the difference. Cheap, hobbled and bricked itself more than once. Even without this i…

Seriously? What's the point of owning the hardware then, might as well just use Dropbox? Seems like you take on all the risk for essentially no benefit.

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

#195
Hmmm. I have one of these drives sitting on my desk. Hasn't been powered up for weeks. Do I disassemble it, take the drive out and grab the data that way or just wait? What are these things formatted as?

Schrödinger storage: data is both lost and found.

Edit: This isn’t the Live version. I think its going to be in pieces Real Soon.

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

#196
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should anyone ever again trust your company to keep their data safe? Because if you need a hard drive, your options are pretty much Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba, and they've all had their own problems.

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.

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

#197
When I purchased a My Book about 15 years ago, the drive was hardware encrypted by the controller board.

That means even if no password was set, if you didn't use it with the WD controller board, you couldn't access your data.

I threw the case away, sold the controller board and formatted the encrypted 2 TB drive with ext4. I'm still using it for backups. I have a restic script that also backups the data to Backblaze.

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

#198
post #183

There’s a difference between MyBook and MyBook Live. The Live version (this article) is ONLY accessible over the cloud service for some reason. Even if you’re on the same LAN there’s no SMB, FTP or anything else. Only the cloud connection. The MyBook is a more normal NAS. Bought one of these for my dad few years ago without noticing the difference. Cheap, hobbled and bricked itself more than once. Even without this i…

Seriously? What's the point of owning the hardware then, might as well just use Dropbox? Seems like you take on all the risk for essentially no benefit.

>What's the point of owning the hardware then, might as well just use Dropbox? Seems like you take on all the risk for essentially no benefit.

Dropbox costs $120/year for 2TB. WD live looks to be a one time purchase price for however many terabytes you want.

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

#199
According to Western Digital[1], the CVE involved[2] has been public and unpatched since 2019. That's insane.

There's "we don't support end-of-life devices" and then there's "we refuse to fix absolutely critical, crippling security vulnerabilities in devices just a few years old." This is well over the line.

I smell (but have no idea of the merits of) a class action lawsuit.

[1] https://www.westerndigital.com/support/productsecurity/wdc-2...

[2] https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-18472

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