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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

#201

Post by dikei »

shash wrote: 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…

I think you are confused between My Book and My Cloud

* My Book: An external HDD that's attached to your computer through USB.

* My Cloud: A NAS that's connected to your network through Ethernet, support SMB, FTP, NFS.

There's also My Cloud Home, which is also a NAS, but you can only access your data through WD proprietary app, not SMB.

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

#202

Post by biglost »

bigiain wrote: post #189
haswell wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In defense of the parent comment, there is a meaningful difference between a device acting as the terminating IP meaning any open services are directly probe-able and a device sitting behind a firewall. For this particular attack (assuming c2 server compromise?) that might not matter, but ultimately there is a massive difference in attack surface when comparing “direct” with “NATed”

How good do you reckon a 6 years past EOL consumer linux device's defences against a browser running 3rd (or 1st) party javascript making http requests to http://192.168.0.1..254]/cgi-bin/factoryRestore.sh ? How much would you bet against that being an unauthenticated call or one with leaked hard coded reds?

My Firefox on ios crash with that link

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

#203

Post by WantonQuantum »

MattGaiser wrote: post #184
zmmmmm wrote: post #175

Hopefully this flushes out the elephant in the room of the irresponsibility of manufacturers selling devices like this and then leaving the software unpatched / unupdated within a year or two of selling it. Unfortunately this needs to become regulated. Either commit to "lifetime" updates (at least 10 years) or be forced to put a massive warning on the label advising the secure period for which the product can be used…

That just effectively means a subscription. So your hard drive will be $100 + $10 a month.

The iPhone I’m writing this on is several years old and fully patched. I don’t pay a subscription to Apple for the phone.

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

#204

Post by achow »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #133
fallingknife_ wrote: post #125

Read this, then checked my old My Book Live. Sure enough... everything's gone. I just used it for continuous laptop backups over my LAN, so unless one of them crashes tonight, I should be good. But, this will certainly give me pause when considering WD products, and this type of product in particular. This is very bad, WD! Are your other products also vulnerable in this way? Why should anyone ever again trust your co…

> 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.

And Samsung.

Using 500GB SSD for many years as an external backup.

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

#205

Post by mapt »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #133
fallingknife_ wrote: post #125

Read this, then checked my old My Book Live. Sure enough... everything's gone. I just used it for continuous laptop backups over my LAN, so unless one of them crashes tonight, I should be good. But, this will certainly give me pause when considering WD products, and this type of product in particular. This is very bad, WD! Are your other products also vulnerable in this way? Why should anyone ever again trust your co…

> 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_defunct_hard_disk_manu...

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

#206

Post by [deleted] »

shash wrote: 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…

[deleted]

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

#207

Post by cmeacham98 »

gruez wrote: post #198
cmeacham98 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To be honest, I just assumed the "Live" service was a subscription but it actually does appear to be one-time.

I should note, however, that it seems the drive is built in and not easily user replaceable/swappable, so it's not really "however many terabytes you want".

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

#209

Post by Scoundreller »

mastazi wrote: post #165
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #133

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 issue at hand is a NAS firmware problem, not a HD drive issue. There are quite a few other brands offering NAS devices e.g. Synology, QNAP, Thecus, Pegasus and more.

Public-facing Synology devices got hit in the past too, but they just used it to mine Litecoin. I think someone calculated it and figured out that it cost something like $400k in electricity to mine $100k of coins on the boxes.

Aha! It was $600k in dogecoin in 2014

https://www.pcworld.com/article/2364120/hacked-synology-nas-...

That’s worth around $125m today (assuming straight hodling).

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

#210

Post by MattGaiser »

WantonQuantum wrote: post #203
MattGaiser wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just effectively means a subscription. So your hard drive will be $100 + $10 a month.

The iPhone I’m writing this on is several years old and fully patched. I don’t pay a subscription to Apple for the phone.

Does it come with any guarantees of lifetime for those patches though? Is there any reason that Apple can’t drop support in two years?
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