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by John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc.

Western Digital My Book Live Storage Devices Under Attack

June 30, 2021

Many of us use an external USB device to augment our computer storage or as a backup device. Last week, BleepingComputer reported that Western Digital My Book NAS devices were being factory reset with all of the files being deleted. Originally, it was thought that the problem was related to a 2018 vulnerability. Not so fast.

Ars Technica posted a more detailed analysis of the “disappearing data” from My Book Live devices. To make matters worse, a Western Digital developer “actively removed code that required a valid user password before allowing factory resets to proceed.” In other words, there was code to require a password authorizing a factory reset which was commented out. Bad move. It is still recommended to disconnect your My Book Live drive to prevent the remote resets, but perhaps moving your data to a different drive is a better and safer solution.

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