Western Digital has in an e-mail has recommended its users to unplug their My Book Live storage devices from the Internet until further notice. During this time the company’s engineers will investigate unexplained compromises that have completely wiped data from devices around the world.
“I have a WD mybook live connected to my home LAN and worked fine for years,” a user commented on Western Digital’s support forum. “I have just found that somehow all the data on it is gone today, while the directories seems there but empty. Previously the 2T volume was almost full but now it shows full capacity.”
After this comment, various other My Book Live users joined the conversation to report they have also lost all of their data. Multiple users reported that the data loss coincided with a factory reset of their device.
As of now, there are no reports of deleted data being restored. So it is recommended for users to disconnect the drives from the internet.
To recall, Western Digital stopped supporting the My Book Live in 2015.
In an email, Western Digital officials wrote:
The incident is under active investigation from Western Digital. We do not have any indications of a breach or compromise of Western Digital cloud services or systems.
We have determined that some My Book Live devices have been compromised by a threat actor. In some cases, this compromise has led to a factory reset that appears to erase all data on the device. The My Book Live device received its final firmware update in 2015.
At this time, we are recommending that customers disconnect their My Book Live devices from the Internet to protect their data on the device.
We have issued the following statement to our customers and will provide updates to this thread when they are available: https://community.wd.com/t/action-required-on-my-book-live-and-my-book-live-duo/268147
The cause behind the mass data deletion is currently unknown and according to Western Digital’s statement, customer accounts seem to be compromised individually.
