But this patch – in the form of a shell script – needs to be applied each time the device is started up, and most users of the devices are not aware of its existence.
Given that many devices running the My Cloud OS 3 software, which were vulnerable, could not upgrade to My Cloud OS 5, the security researchers released a patch to fix the vulnerabilities they had discovered.
How to fix, recover data from, or upgrade your WD My Book Live However, in February of this year, the researchers posted a video on YouTube showing how they discovered the vulnerabilities, effectively making public their existence. Just before the event was due to take place, Western Digital released a newer version of the operating system that fixed the issue for select devices, so the researchers could no longer enter the contest.
It seems that part of this exploit was made public by a pair of security researchers who planned to use it in the Pwn2Own hacking competition in Tokyo in 2020. Further, thumbnail generation, which some users don’t need or want, can cause ‘unending indexing’ or even freeze the device.” How were these Western Digital devices attacked? “The newest firmware eliminates integration with Google, Dropbox, One Drive and Adobe. However, as PetaPixel notes, many features are unavailable, and there are problems with the new software. These cloud devices are popular with photographers, who need large amounts of storage for their photos, and often want to have remote access to store photos when on shoots. Note that the company’s My Book and My Book Duo devices, which do not connect to the internet, are affected by this issue.
For users who need access to lots of data, they can be cheaper than a cloud storage subscription, and provide full control over the data. While the affected devices were sold with storage from 1 to 8 TB, Western Digital currently sells models with up to 36 TB storage. Unlike, say, an iCloud Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive account, these devices can hold large amounts of data, limited only by the size of the hard drives they contain. These devices are a type of network-attached storage device (NAS), which are popular because they offer large amounts of storage that is accessible remotely. These issues affect a number of Western Digital My Book Live and My Book Live Duo devices: Also, many users do not want to upgrade to this new version because it is not working well. While this vulnerability has been fixed in a recent version of the newer devices’ operating system, many users cannot upgrade to this new version, because their devices do not support it. Hackers took advantage of a bug in the devices’ firmware of certain older devices, along with a zero-day vulnerability in some newer devices. In the past few weeks, many users of Western Digital network-connected storage devices have found that their data was remotely wiped by hackers. USB-A to USB Micro-B cable (compatible with USB 2.Security & Privacy Got a WD My Book Live device? Your data is at risk-here’s what to do It comes with WD Discovery software for WD Security to help protect your data and is compatible with Apple Time Machine.
My Passport for Mac portable storage is ready to use out of the box so you can start transferring files, saving your memories and backing up right away. WD Discovery can also manage your drive through WD Drive Utilities. Included WD Discovery software lets you connect to popular social media and cloud storage services like Facebook, Instagram, Dropbox and Google Drive so you can import your photos, videos and docs to the My Passport for Mac drive to help preserve your online life. My Passport for Mac includes USB-C and USB-A cables for universal compatibility with Mac computers of yesterday and today. You can also add a "return-if-found" message as the password prompt to help your My Passport for Mac drive find its way back to you if it ever accidentally gets left behind. Just activate password protection and set your own personalized password. The My Passport for Mac drive's built-in 256-bit AES hardware encryption with WD Security software helps keep your content private and safe. Password Protection with Hardware Encryption My Passport for Mac portable storage works straight out of the box with Mac devices which makes it easy to get going quickly - drag and drop files to and from, or setup a backup routine with Apple's Time Machine software to help protect your photos, videos, music and documents. May require reformatting for other operating systems.Ĭompatibility may vary depending on user's hardware configuration and operating system. Learn more about the Western Digital WDBLPG0020BBK-WESE Model Brandįormatted HFS + Journaled macOS High Sierra, Sierra or El Capitan.