Anyone with a Western Digital MyBook storage device?

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Gfamily
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Anyone with a Western Digital MyBook storage device?

Post by Gfamily » Thu Jun 24, 2021 11:29 pm

Looks like they are being remotely wiped

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/s ... worldwide/

Probably worth taking off line if you have one - at least until the story has been checked out.
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MartinDurkin
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Re: Anyone with a Western Digital MyBook storage device?

Post by MartinDurkin » Fri Jun 25, 2021 5:07 pm

Shame I didn't see this earlier. My device seems to have been factory reset at some point since I last looked at it. Was working on Wednesday. Luckily it is just backups, so nothing lost, but I need to find another solution for backups. Can anyone recommend an alternative to the WD device? I'm not sure how I will be able to trust any networked backups in the future though. This was behind the firewall in my broadband router.

eta: thanks for the heads up Gfamily. I've not seen this mentioned elsewhere yet so would have been mighty confused next time I looked at the drive

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Re: Anyone with a Western Digital MyBook storage device?

Post by Gfamily » Fri Jun 25, 2021 6:07 pm

MartinDurkin wrote:
Fri Jun 25, 2021 5:07 pm
Shame I didn't see this earlier. My device seems to have been factory reset at some point since I last looked at it. Was working on Wednesday. Luckily it is just backups, so nothing lost, but I need to find another solution for backups. Can anyone recommend an alternative to the WD device? I'm not sure how I will be able to trust any networked backups in the future though. This was behind the firewall in my broadband router.

eta: thanks for the heads up Gfamily. I've not seen this mentioned elsewhere yet so would have been mighty confused next time I looked at the drive
How frustrating.
I have heard a suggestion that WD might be able to help getting data recovered.
My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
ETA 5/8/20: I've been advised that the result was correct, it was the initial interpretation that needed to be withdrawn
Meta? I'd say so!

MartinDurkin
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Re: Anyone with a Western Digital MyBook storage device?

Post by MartinDurkin » Fri Jun 25, 2021 8:43 pm

Gfamily wrote:
Fri Jun 25, 2021 6:07 pm


How frustrating.
I have heard a suggestion that WD might be able to help getting data recovered.
Not an issue for me, I have all the originals and another backup copy on a portable USB drive. The only thing at serious risk is incremental changes to my mailfile since I last backed up to the portable drive a couple of weeks ago.
Would still like to have some kind of network storage to allow Windows to do incremental backups.

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Gfamily
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Re: Anyone with a Western Digital MyBook storage device?

Post by Gfamily » Fri Jun 25, 2021 9:25 pm

MartinDurkin wrote:
Fri Jun 25, 2021 8:43 pm
Gfamily wrote:
Fri Jun 25, 2021 6:07 pm


How frustrating.
I have heard a suggestion that WD might be able to help getting data recovered.
Not an issue for me, I have all the originals and another backup copy on a portable USB drive. The only thing at serious risk is incremental changes to my mailfile since I last backed up to the portable drive a couple of weeks ago.
Would still like to have some kind of network storage to allow Windows to do incremental backups.
I have a ZyXEL NAS box that acts as a useful repository for data that's shared between the 'weather logger' and the other machines - as well as music and videos programmes so we can watch them on any machine on the house.
My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
ETA 5/8/20: I've been advised that the result was correct, it was the initial interpretation that needed to be withdrawn
Meta? I'd say so!

Millennie Al
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Re: Anyone with a Western Digital MyBook storage device?

Post by Millennie Al » Sat Jun 26, 2021 12:35 am

MartinDurkin wrote:
Fri Jun 25, 2021 5:07 pm
Shame I didn't see this earlier. My device seems to have been factory reset at some point since I last looked at it.
It looks like it's a known defect - CVE-2018-18472 which allows any remote attacker to wipe the drive (or do what they like to it). This defect was registered in October 2018. According to Western Digital "The My Book Live and My Book Live Duo devices received its final firmware update in 2015." so they did nothing about it. Details via https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.c ... 2018-18472

To be effective, any backup needs to be stored on a device that is switched off and not connected to anything.

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