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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

#681

Post by lhopki01 »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #642
wycy wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could an oven or washing machine possibly be useful remotely?! I'm a fan of connectivity, but that just seems absurd for those appliances.

My new oven has bluetooth and wifi connectivity. I obviously thought this sounded completely insane, but I went ahead and googled to see what people were using it for. I was actually surprised and impressed. First, there's a way to do sous vide cooking without one of those big circulators like the one I use. They sell a device that is a little bluetooth thermometer; you can put it in a pot of water, and the induction…

Most of these things can just be done by using the timer that comes with every oven. I've often set the oven to come up at around 15.00 so I can cook a stew for a few hours before getting home.

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

#682

Post by freshpots »

exporectomy wrote: post #87
WalterBright wrote: post #38

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!

I think you've fallen into the trap of being scared by the news. Normal hard drive failures don't make it to HN because they're so boring and common. You even had one yourself. That's how unreliable maintaining your own backup device is. This very story is just that - people had their own hard drive and it wasn't maintained for security so it got erased. At least this article needs to be added to your mental list of…

"At least this article needs to be added to your mental list of failures of local storage to balance your news-driven bias." What a toxic comment. You are saying far more about yourself than you are of someone you don't know at all. Projection and a lot of anger/hate inside.

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

#683

Post by brobdingnagians »

labawi wrote: post #680
nitrogen wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could also be useful for anyone who worries they left the oven on.

"I don't worry I've left the oven on anymore. Now I worry some else turned it on."

And my concern would be that, like the diesel motor example, someone would find a failure state that starts a conflagration. Leaving it on accidentally at 200C probably won't hurt anything, but malicious hacks might be catastrophic.

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

#684

Post by pbhjpbhj »

edgeform wrote: post #660
myself248 wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard drives are a mediocre example, but I have exactly such an enclosure sitting around that I use as cold-storage because I know better than to connect it to a network. If I want to get data off it, I set up an isolated segment in RFC3927 space. As a result, I've bought a new NAS-type device which does have supported software and which I can put on a live network with only minimal worry. (I still take backups of cou…

> If I want to get data off it, I set up an isolated segment in RFC3927 space. Do you really not see how completely unrealistic this is for the average consumer, and honestly the majority of HN readers?

I get the impression they're only describing how they handle it (for the crowd here); I don't see any suggestion the OP thinks this is a reasonable expectation of ordinary consumers.

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

#685

Post by pbhjpbhj »

thomascgalvin wrote: post #586
vertis wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you sell me a HD/IoT, and say it does X/Y/Z and then no longer want to provide X/Y/Z, I should get my money back. This whole, "ah sorry we decided to end-of-life that because we couldn't make any more money off it" is so many levels of bullshit. It's also part of a broader attitude on not repairing anything. Battery dead in your activity tracker? throw it out and buy a new one. Worse still, the band has degraded b…

> If you sell me a HD/IoT, and say it does X/Y/Z and then no longer want to provide X/Y/Z, I should get my money back. This is my takeaway from the whole Peloton fiasco. If you spend thousands of dollars on a product, and after the purchase the company bricks the product, the company should legally owe you a full refund.

Under the Consumer Rights Act in the UK there is no end of 'warranty' period. If the product expires when it would be reasonably expected to work then you have a claim against the company. They can fix, like-for-like replace, or pay you money. They do get to reduce the compensation based on the use you've had of the product, but that seems reasonable.

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

#686

Post by pbhjpbhj »

alisonkisk wrote: post #579
dtech wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that this is serious enough that EOL doesn't apply. Yeah sure EOL for updates, features, minor issues etc. But this is literally "Anyone in the world can remotely make your product unusable and destroy everything on it while you use it as intended" I don't care if a car manifacturer EOL'ed a car model, if an issue gets discovered that will make the engine explode at random they better do recall.

But it's EOL. EOL means end of life, not just "no longer sold". EOL means we agreed it's trash and you are using it at your own risk. It's not the manufacturer's fault if your expired fire extinguisher or medicine fails. Internet things are out durable goods. They require maintenance or they fail. If EOL is unreasonably short, that's a factor in purchase decision or contract or commercial code violation if they surpr…

That works if they said the EoL date explicitly at checkout. I think they should also have to say the per annum cost, so "£120, equivalent to £240 per annum to our EoL date" (ie if the EoL is in 6 months).

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

#687

Post by ineedasername »

labawi wrote: post #679
ineedasername wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software should be more secure. However I don't think it's realistic to expect bug-free perfectly secure software. There is no field of engineering where 100% perfect tolerances are possible, and when you start getting past 99% the resource requirements to get to the next fraction of a % quickly go non-linear. This is why 1) Security patches will pretty much always be necessary and 2) relying on perfect software alon…

> There is no field of engineering where 100% perfect tolerances are possible This is a false proposition. All actual engineering professions I know of have processes, checks and balances to avert disasters and premature failures. No one expects all of the shingles to be perfectly straight or have the same color, occasionally a roof may have a bit of a leak, yet I think even a single 4y old roof developing a massive…

Roof/building/bridge construction are things that have been around thousands of years. And they still get things extremely wrong sometimes: look up the footbridge in London as an example, it needed the equivalent of a security patch. On the issue of roofs, it's also often recommended that you do annual roof inspections and maintenance, looking for potential issues.

Regardless, we're talking about security, so let's go to the actual real-world equivalent. Physical security. Is perfection possible there? Nope. Anything even remotely capable of surviving a sustained attack is going to cost an amount of money reserved for corporations and nations, not everyday consumers.

If you think the current quality of physical engineering is something we should hold up as a comparison to the security quality expected of software, let's compare notes in a few hundred years when programming reaches the same level of maturity.

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

#688

Post by BrandoElFollito »

I am not sure if I understand correctly that this product is not maintained (EOL) since 2015? So officially not receiving any updates since then?

If so I am not sure what people complain about.

If my understanding is incorrect then WD behaviour is to blame (at least people should get money as compensation for the lack of due diligence from WD).

Now, if someone's life depends on the data, having it in one place only is crazy.

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

#689

Post by labawi »

ineedasername wrote: post #687
labawi wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no field of engineering where 100% perfect tolerances are possible This is a false proposition. All actual engineering professions I know of have processes, checks and balances to avert disasters and premature failures. No one expects all of the shingles to be perfectly straight or have the same color, occasionally a roof may have a bit of a leak, yet I think even a single 4y old roof developing a massive…

Roof/building/bridge construction are things that have been around thousands of years. And they still get things extremely wrong sometimes: look up the footbridge in London as an example, it needed the equivalent of a security patch. On the issue of roofs, it's also often recommended that you do annual roof inspections and maintenance, looking for potential issues. Regardless, we're talking about security, so let's g…

> thousands of years

Maybe I should have used electrical installations as an example?

> real-world equivalent. Physical security

Physical security isn't a good analogue, because you don't have a line of hackers, trying to get into your cupboard and magically also millions of other cupboards, closets and storage rooms with near 0 marginal cost and incomparably easy way to avoid getting caught.

Unlike physical security, perfect SW security is pretty much attainable (shocking, isn't it), with 0 marginal cost (no cost to duplicate). Physical access, social manipulation etc is physical security.

> footbridge in London

One bridge in 100, caught before it failed? Compared to all SW with network access and weekly updates.

We know how to engineer things so they are reasonably safe, we actually do it.

We also know many ways to make software much, much safer with only moderate investment, and some ways to make provably correct SW, and we do not care.

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

#690

Post by exporectomy »

freshpots wrote: post #682
exporectomy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've fallen into the trap of being scared by the news. Normal hard drive failures don't make it to HN because they're so boring and common. You even had one yourself. That's how unreliable maintaining your own backup device is. This very story is just that - people had their own hard drive and it wasn't maintained for security so it got erased. At least this article needs to be added to your mental list of…

"At least this article needs to be added to your mental list of failures of local storage to balance your news-driven bias." What a toxic comment. You are saying far more about yourself than you are of someone you don't know at all. Projection and a lot of anger/hate inside.

> You are saying far more about yourself [...] a lot of anger/hate inside.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

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