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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

#551

Post by megous »

Popegaf wrote: post #433
ivraatiems wrote: post #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…

EOL should be made to legally mean: opensource or something equivalent. If Windows isn't supported on my laptop, I can nearly always replace it with Linux and still keep it alive. With stuff like this, they can decide to never update it again or just turn off some critical service and render a device unusable. It's not just a thing about owning what you purchase and having the freedom to do what you want with it, it'…

The powerpc SoC in that drive is even supported in mainline Linux. And the code for original v2.6.32 Linux and some ancient U-Boot is available on WD website. So people could have made their drives secure after EOL. Some maybe even did.

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

#552

Post by snowwrestler »

iSnow wrote: post #446
oblio wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a car manufacturer sells a car, in many parts of the world they're supposed to still offer parts for it for 7 years after they stop selling it, by law.

That's not exactly great, tbh. A car can easily run for 10y (mine is due for a replacement at 19yo), so 7y seems ecologically unnecessarily wasteful. I get that it doesn't make sense to offer parts for 20yo cars, but if we want to live in a sustainable future, people need to stop replacing cars after 5y or so.

It’s generally not necessary to replace cars every 5 years due to part shortage.

For years the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) replacement parts fill into the wholesale and retail channels. If the manufacturer stops offering the part, there are still parts in those channels to meet demand, sometimes for many more years to come.

The manufacturer may keep offering parts beyond the requirement, too. Parts can be profitable, and service can be a big part of dealer revenue. Dealers who make money on service put pressure on the manufacturer to keep parts available.

Physical parts are also pretty easy to copy, so if demand persists beyond the availability of OEM parts, you can often get aftermarket parts. There is also a channel of junkyards and enthusiasts who hoard used parts with life still left in them.

I’ve got a couple friends who like old vehicles and they are able to get parts for trucks that are nearing 40 years old. I own a car that just turned 12 and have never had the slightest problem getting parts for it, even OEM.

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

#553

Post by Someone »

cesarb wrote: post #535
Someone wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“a hardware manufacturer should be bound by law to sell parts for any vehicle it sold in the past, as long as it exists” Cars would get extremely expensive. Imagine Ford still having to supply model T wheels and engines. They either would have to have kept a production line and employees knowing to operate it around, or have stocked ‘enough’ parts, where ‘enough’ is very hard to estimate up front. Also, stocked parts…

> or have stocked ‘enough’ parts, where ‘enough’ is very hard to estimate up front. On the building where I live, the company which does the elevator maintenance offered a significant discount on the replacement of the control system in the machine room with a more modern model (which uses less energy). Their reason: including us, they had only two clients left which used that older system, so once both upgraded to a…

I also know people who work in banking.

¿Some? ATM machines have hard disks, and are certified with specific models.

You would be surprised what a hard disk with 1/100 the capacity (or even less) of a $100 one costs.

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

#554

Post by kingsuper20 »

sgerenser wrote: post #530
Someone wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“a hardware manufacturer should be bound by law to sell parts for any vehicle it sold in the past, as long as it exists” Cars would get extremely expensive. Imagine Ford still having to supply model T wheels and engines. They either would have to have kept a production line and employees knowing to operate it around, or have stocked ‘enough’ parts, where ‘enough’ is very hard to estimate up front. Also, stocked parts…

Which would happen a lot more frequently in this counterfactual.

>It's extra silly since there's always a robust aftermarket for any reasonably popular car.

One difference is the difficulties in making some 'parts' now. It's one thing to make a fuel pump for a 1950's car, quite another to duplicate a controller board, often with obsolete parts and secret software, that runs the convertible top.

Another is that a lot of parts are more monolithic than they used to be and harder to design/build. Look at headlight assemblies.

It doesn't help that with the increasing amount of software and electronics in a modern car (a Tesla being the leading example), the auto industry is acquiring the product lifecycle times and forced obsolescence of the PC industry.

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

#555

Post by xoa »

alias_neo wrote: post #464
dageshi wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the real answer is, you have to pay for ongoing support or the base cost of the device has to go up a lot or you roll your own with pc hardware and you're responsible for updating and making sure everything still works.

Personally, I'm not opposed to any of those plans. PC hardware isn't ideal because you lose the benefits of specialised offload capabilities. I'd be willing to pay a nominal annual fee for devices which are important to get firmware updates; router, WiFi AP, phone, etc. To an extent I've partly achieved the modularity I speak of; after becoming fed up with decommissioning WiFi routers every couple years, I moved to r…

>PC hardware isn't ideal because you lose the benefits of specialised offload capabilities.

Just so you know, this isn't true. Nothing stops hardware offload from being put in a PCIe slot (that's where it tends to have started actually). And indeed that's a fairly standard thing on decent NICs, which don't have to be particularly expensive if you buy used. I've switched to OPNsense for routing functionality at all sites I manage, and have had no issues with hardware offloading for CRC, TCP segmentation and large receive offloading, or VLAN hardware filtering with Intel or Chelsio NICs. Both are very well supported under FreeBSD. I suspect a Linux based solution would have an even wider range of options since it tends to have more hardware support, so something like a Mellanox card could work.

At any rate though it works well, and running on a PC opens a vast array of useful options and flexibility, all the standard tools are there, and one can get something enormously more capable then a typical pre-made gateway/router for cheap.

>I moved to router, switch, AP (Ubiquiti gear).

I did this as well way back, and still run the switch and APs as UniFi for now. But I'd caution against depending on them for routing, it's always been a weak point and they've really, REALLY gone down the tubes on development there long since. UniFi gateway/routing and most network services that they've decided to make dependent on it (DNS, DHCP etc) is frankly complete crap. OPNsense (probably pfsense would work too but I didn't want to go to another proprietary solution with a worrying concentration of asshole at the top), VyOS or the like aren't quite as nice to manage, but it's so nice to have normal capabilities and something kept up to date again.

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

#556

Post by mark_l_watson »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #410
brobdingnagians wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am trying to get rid of any smart devices in my life. I need less things connected to the internet not more. I bought Bruce Shneier's "Click Here to Kill Everybody, and that just convinced me even more. Software is a weak point, and I'd rather have the least amount possible in my "mission critical" everyday life gadgets. I want single-purpose, purpose built devices that do that one thing very well, without connecti…

as most products become connected you will have to pay a premium for products that are not - especially as companies try to make profits from tracking (as in SmartTvs). People who are not rich enough to buy everything single purpose will have to pick and choose.

If you can even get non-Smart TVs.

Last month I gave our nice SmartTV to a friend and bought low quality non-Smart TV from Walmart for $199. Really low quality but running it with just a new Apple TV box is a UI delight. My wife is unhappy with the downgrade, but I love it - much more private, no unwanted SmartTV apps and having the UI driven in ways I didn't like, being forced to have the old device on the Internet, etc.

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

#557

Post by alisonkisk »

Popegaf wrote: post #433
ivraatiems wrote: post #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…

EOL should be made to legally mean: opensource or something equivalent. If Windows isn't supported on my laptop, I can nearly always replace it with Linux and still keep it alive. With stuff like this, they can decide to never update it again or just turn off some critical service and render a device unusable. It's not just a thing about owning what you purchase and having the freedom to do what you want with it, it'…

The free market soluton:

Market experimentation is necessary for innovation. Now we've learned never to buy a product from WD (in case you forgot that last year they intentionally sold unfit SMR hard drives and lied about it).

Also, always have backups (not just syncs!).

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

#558

Post by alisonkisk »

snowwrestler wrote: post #552
iSnow wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not exactly great, tbh. A car can easily run for 10y (mine is due for a replacement at 19yo), so 7y seems ecologically unnecessarily wasteful. I get that it doesn't make sense to offer parts for 20yo cars, but if we want to live in a sustainable future, people need to stop replacing cars after 5y or so.

It’s generally not necessary to replace cars every 5 years due to part shortage. For years the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) replacement parts fill into the wholesale and retail channels. If the manufacturer stops offering the part, there are still parts in those channels to meet demand, sometimes for many more years to come. The manufacturer may keep offering parts beyond the requirement, too. Parts can be p…

That was then. Going forward, after the legal minimum expires, DRM will prevent replacement parts from working.

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

#560

Post by WalterBright »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #361
WalterBright wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should trust anything connected to the internet. Demand a physical write-enable switch from your backup drive vendor.

You should trust anything connected to the internet. I presume you mean shouldn't rather than should.

Right.
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