Western Digital confirms digital burglary, calls the cops

Western Digital is today dealing with a "network security incident" after detecting a break-in into its internal systems by an unauthorized third party. The manufacturer said it is taking steps to secure its business operations, with the result that some of customer-facing services have been affected. In terse statement on …

[ChoHag]

I thought the funnies came out on Friday?

> "The login service for WD My Cloud Home is unavailable. Thank you @westerndigital for not letting me access my data that I have in the living room."

> "Of course I worked all day yesterday on a project that is due tomorrow, to find I can't access it and have to do it again before 8am. This is the last WD device I will ever buy."

Depend on a third party? What could possibly go wrong?

[Blazde]

'My Cloud Home. It's a cloud in your home! All the disadvantages of centralised storage on your premises together with all the disadvantages of cloud storage. Available now.'

I'd guess there probably is some way to access data locally (perhaps depending on configuration)? Can't confirm because the User Manual on WD's site is currently 503 Service Unavailable.

[Version 1.0]

Cloud issues like this are just an illustration of the Internet "Climate Change" these days.

[hoola]

Lack of cloud logins preventing access to local devices..

This is just typical where people buy, sign up for and consume all sorts of services with either no understanding of how they operate or being totally unaware that the "web login" is actually a cloud service to access something locally.

It is a huge cultural issue that is going to keep getting worse. Look at all the "Smart Connected" crap there is out there now that is associated with appliances.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: Lack of cloud logins preventing access to local devices..

It will probably happen with software that "needs" to phone home too. I wonder how Adobe copes if its licence servers are unreachable. There's too many software customer-milkers going down this route of subscription software.

[Commswonk]

Arghh... my eyes, my eyes

From the article:

WD "implemented incident response efforts and initiated an investigation with the assistance of leading outside security and forensic experts

and

"As part of its remediation efforts, Western Digital is actively working to restore impacted infrastructure and services. Based on the investigation to date, the company believes the unauthorized party obtained certain data from its systems and is working to understand the nature and scope of that data"

Please; somebody... anybody... please make it stop.

[sitta_europea]

"Western Digital said it has also been implementing "proactive measures" to secure its business operations..."

I thought "proactive measures" are things you do so that it doesn't happen - not *after* it happens.

[Blazde]

Maybe it means they're reaching out to the ransomers with a juicy offer instead of waiting for the letter covered with cut-up bits of newsprint to arrive first.

[Anonymous Custard]

Nah, they're just being pro-active in ensuring no-one will buy their junk in the future now that they realise quite what "My Cloud" actually entails these days.

Speaking as someone who moved from WD to Synology years ago...

[MartG]

Why on Earth don't they have a fallback option which doesn't rely on cloud services to access data on a NAS drive sat inches away from my PC ?