If you have a Western Digital My Book Live backup drive connected to the internet, READ THIS!!!

[thewayne]

Disconnect it from any internet-side connections, including your computer, RIGHT NOW!

There is a bug, most likely a bad actor hack, that is WIPING ALL CONTENT FROM THESE DRIVES!

And if your drive is encrypted, this data loss is likely permanent! Lots of people have already lost years worth of data to whatever it is that's happening. Part of the problem is these drives are accessed via a cloud infrastructure, I'm guessing someone is figuring out how to map local IP addresses in this cloud system, found a weakness in their management software, but hasn't yet written a bot to wipe them en masse and is doing them pretty slowly - for now.

So eject the drive from your Windows Explorer or Mac Finder and and disconnect the ethernet cable to it, optionally just power it down until Western Digital figures out just what is going on and gets a fix released. These drives received their last update in 2015, which means they'd be long-past dead where I live, but probably working fine for lots of people at lower altitudes.

And PLEASE, copy this and post it publicly on your blog if you have a lot of computer people who are likely to have infrastructure like this on their systems! This needs to be spread far and wide, hopefully faster than people's external drives are getting wiped!

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/06/mass-data-wipe-in-my-book-devices-prompts-warning-from-western-digital/

Comments

[elayna]

Okay, this is a totally stupid question, I have a WD My Book, it's plugged into my computer, but not into the internet separately. I assume I should still unplug it from the computer and disconnect the power?

I was, of course, just about to leave!

[thewayne]

If you don’t have software that lets you access the contents of the drive across the internet, it should be fine. Myself, when I’m leaving for a trip, I power off my computer.

[elayna]

I was just about to shut everything and be gone until Sunday, so I shall do that.

I've been thinking about getting a new external hard drive, do you have any recommendation?

[thewayne]

WD is fine, I have no problem with them. I also use Seagate, IIRC they are now owned by WD. Buffalo drives seem to be good, I’ve never owned them. For me, no drive seems to last more than about three years, but we live at pretty high altitude. It’s not like I abuse them, it’s our environment. Most people get longer life out of hard drives than I do.

[elayna]

Thanks! I picked up a new one and am transferring files now. It's amazing to me, how small they are and how much they can hold.

[thewayne]

I find the price of memory cards astounding!  I needed to buy a new one for Russet to do some video over three days at the observatory, and you can now buy 256 GIG SD cards for about $50!

[rain_gryphon]

It is sad, that people will put such ingenuity into pointless cruelty.

[dewline]

Also, annoying.

[kathmandu]

Thank you for the warning.

[thewayne]

You are welcome.  I hope you and any friends are not affected by this.