It will sound too alarmist, but it is quite a serious issue since it involves the total loss of data that may have been stored for many years: if you have a WD My Book Live, disconnect it from the internet now unless you still lose the information contained in he.
WD My Book Live at Risk from Malware
One of the greatest fears of any user is losing the information that for years has been stored digitally. And not only the one related to professional topics, but also the most personal ones such as travel, vacation or family photos. What’s more, this last type of data is probably the one that most users who have a WD solution are most afraid of losing, designed for home profiles and not so much business.
And, as the company itself has reported through a publication in its official forums: if you have a WD My Book Live , you must disconnect it from the internet now. Because according to the official version, a malware is compromising said data that could be completely deleted from the drives and with no option to be recovered. This that you can see below is the message posted:
Western Digital has determined that some My Book Live devices are being compromised by malware. In some cases, this security flaw has led to a factory reset that appears to erase all data on the device. The last update of the My Book Live was at the end of 2015. We understand that our customers’ data is very important and that is why we recommend that you disconnect it from the internet to protect the information. We are actively researching and will update this thread when we know more.
Western digital
Although the reason given by WD refers to malware on some devices compromised for others, the origin is in the company’s own servers, where the application that serves My Book Live users is executed to log in and thus be able to connect to your units. A failure in its security is what would have allowed the sending of those remote commands that reset the network storage device. Which, in addition, has not been updated since 2015.
Therefore, if you have not yet been affected by the problem and your data is still intact, do not risk and disconnect until there is more information about it.
What to do if I have a WD My Book Live
As we indicated above, if you are a user of a WD My Book Live, the only option you have right now is to disconnect it as soon as possible. From there we have to wait and see what they say from WD. Until they confirm that it is already safe or how to proceed to continue accessing said data, it is better not to plug it in again.
For the rest, it is true that something basic that everyone should do is have a second copy of this information in another unit and if possible even in another location. Logically if it is a storage device other than the My Book Live better, even if it is a conventional HDD. Because if it is another network storage product, there will always be the risk of a security problem occurring, such as those recently seen also with QNAP NAS.
So nothing, take seriously the warning if you are a user of one and consider how you make your backups. You will avoid scares.
