WD My Book Live at risk: disconnect from the Internet to avoid data loss
Malicious software is threatening the data on Western Digital's «My Book Live». The external hard drive with NAS function should be disconnected from the Internet immediately.
Owners of Western Digital's «My Book Live» or «Live Duo» are urged to remove it from the Internet as soon as possible. Why? There’s a risk of all data being deleted. According to Western Digital, this risk is caused by malicious software. However, more details aren’t yet known.
As several users in the WD forum report, their «My Book Live» or «My Book Live Duo» was reset to factory settings without any intervention. Others report being confronted with a password prompt for which they don’t know the password. Those who still have access to their device either report of an intact file structure with empty folders or of complete deletion of their data.
Will Western Digital will help affected customers with a data recovery service? We don’t know yet. A small ray of hope in this story is that at least in Switzerland, no My Book Live has been sold since the end of 2013. However, this also explains why the devices are affected by hacks in the first place. Western Digital stopped supporting the affected products at the end of 2015.
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