Photo by Sundry Photography ( Shutterstock)Network-attached storage devices (NAS) are external hard drives that have network connectivity. These are private cloud drives that you can use to remotely access your files from your home. These drives are convenient but you need to disconnect them from your WiFi immediately if you have a My Book Live or My Book Live DUO USB NAS drive from Western Digital. This will protect your data from hackers.AdvertisementUser reports indicate that outsiders have been able to access the NAS drives remotely using the WD My Book Live App. Once inside, the hacker takes the files saved and performs a factory reset which wipes out all data. This is a particularly devastating attack because data cannot be recovered after a system reset.Users would normally expect a security update to address an issue like this. Western Digital discontinued support for the affected NAS drives back in 2015. The devices have not received a firmware update since. This explains why the vulnerability exists in the first instance, but it also suggests that a patch may never be released. According to a Western Digitals official statement:Western Digital discovered that malicious software has been found on some My Book Live devices. This compromise may have led to factory resets that appear to wipe all data from the devices in some cases.Western Digital has not yet confirmed that it will fix the problem with a patch.In 2015, the final firmware update was made to My Book Live. We know that customers' data is important. To protect your data, disconnect My Book Live from the Internet.Users are advised to immediately check their drives. It is possible that someone has wiped your drive. To prevent an attack, if you are still able to log in and your data remains accessible, you need to remove the drive from the network. Although you will not be able access the drive remotely via internet, you can still connect it to your computer or laptop using an Ethernet cable.Your computers WiFi connection should be turned off. An Ethernet cable can be used to connect the computer and NAS drive. Restart your computer. Your NAS drives should turn on and be visible in your computer's storage devices. For assistance, visit the Western Digitals support page.Advertisement[TweakTown]
