The manufacturer Western Digital recommends that My Book Live storage devices be disconnected from the Internet until further notice. Its engineers investigate the inexplicable compromises that have completely erased data from devices around the world.
The mass disk cleaning incidents were brought to light in a Western Digital support forum thread. So far, there are no reports that deleted data can be restored later, insisting on disconnecting it until further notice.
Disconnect your My Book Live or you will lose data
Several My Book Live users quickly joined the conversation to report that they too had experienced the exact same thing. All claim that their data has been erased, in a sudden way, which does not seem like a case of ransomware. Several users reported that the data loss coincided with a factory reset that was performed on their devices. One person posted a log showing unexplained behavior that occurred on Wednesday.
Western Digital stopped supporting My Book Lives in 2015, but continues to support them as many people still use them to preserve data. The manufacturer has advised customers to disconnect their devices to prevent further attacks while the company investigates the mass removal.
It is possible that customer accounts have been individually compromised. Meanwhile, My Book Live users are trying to manage the difficulties caused by the incident. The consequences of this enormous failure are being enormous, since clients kept personal and professional files there for years. As we recommend here, we advise having multiple copies of important files, with one copy locally, one copy on a physical device, and one in the cloud so that you have multiple places to retrieve them from in case of loss.
Source: ArsTechnica
