Western Digital Personal Cloud Devices Hack Attack....

Talk Electrician Forum

Help Support Talk Electrician Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

SPECIAL LOCATION

Trailer Boy - Electrician.
Supporting Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2008
Messages
14,539
Reaction score
1,208
I have a WD Elements unit connected to my systems via USB, but it is local access only, no cloud access, and I can still access it, so it doesn't look like mine is hit.
I only use it for redundant backup of my primary RAID anyway, and that is what it is connected to, my Synology unit via USB, so it just shows up as a local network, which I am able to open files.

The hackers are busy these days.
Lots of reports on Facebook, and WhatsApp, then what happened to Linus Tech Tips on YouTube recently lost all of its channels and they are a specialist IT YouTuber.
 
Thinking about this and the high-profile hacks, was what has just happened to Virgin Media a hardware failure, was it a configuration change gone bad, was it random software corruption, or was that a hack?
Are we seeing the results of state-sponsored actors from certain unfriendly states?
I don't care when I say Russia, China, India, and even Turkey.
I don't trust any of them, especially Turkey, as they are supposed to be a part of NATO and the EEA, yet they are siding too closely with Russia for my liking.
China is just simply untrustworthy, and I've worked there, so I have the experience to draw on.
India, look how many scam phone calls originate there.
These are just the big well-known player.
What about the other smaller state-sponsored actors from smaller states or those that are sub-sponsored, just co-located?

Is this how the start of WW III is going to be?...
 
It just reinforces my mistrust of anything "cloud" Why on earth would I want to entrust my data storage to a third party and then find it hacked? I remember 20 years ago the company I worked for who previously had all their IT in house and took care of their own local data backup, announcing they were outsourcing everything to a cloud based solution, and i thought what a stupid decision.
 
the_cloud.png



https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_cloud.png
 
I have a my cloud home device. Its useful as it means I could access estimates and other documents stored on it when out and about.

It still works locally just lost the remote access at the moment.

It's never good news when a large company like this gets hacked. Now the ambulance chasing lawyers will be hounding them for personal data loss.

Just a heads up to all the self employed guys..... Did you know if you have a dash cam in your works vehicle you legally have to register that and pay for it with the data protection people.

It's all part of being GDPR compliant.
I think it also applies if you have cctv at your office (if its not your home) and a member of the public can be filmed there.

More info
 
I've just seen in the news that the microsoft outlook cloud email service used to give people 15gb for emails and attachments, but has now decided to amalgamate outlook and open drive (which gives 5gb) services thats all well and good, but apparently attachements now come out of the 5gb one drive limit, not the outlook limit, people who are already over the 5gb limit of everything in one drive are unable to send or receive emails with or without attachments unless they clear stuff out of the one drive account. Hopefully they'll be able to remember the password to do so, as if they need a password reset email to come through, then they won't receieve that and it all becomes rather catch 22.

I'm glad that I resgistered $lastname as a domain (org.uk unfortuntaly, .co.uk wasn't available) almost 20 years ago and my email is hosted by some guys I was in school with, rather than being tied into the whims of one of these global companies, or having it tied to an ISP account that would disappear if I changed provided. I can also give out $company_asking@$lastname.org.uk as my email address and it'll still find me and I'll know if they sold it to marketing companies
 
I have a personal cloud, but it's Synology, on its own domain & static global IP.
So it doesn't rely on anyone else's servers, but, it is susceptible to direct attacks.
 
Definitely owning your own domain has so many benefits and with prices so cheap now a days I wonder why all businesses don't do it.

Always amuses me when I see a van with a gmail or hotmail address on the side of it, the lastest one was a pizza restaurant the missues went to on friday with friends, found the receipt with the left overs she brought back and printed under the address was $[email protected]

@Sidewinder which ISP you on to get a static IP for a home connection (or are you on a business account?) NTL/Virginmedia/whatever they call themseleves this week that I am on don't do them, was going to set up ftp access to my stuff so I can access it remotely, now the dynamic IP address rarely changes, but it could do, and my luck would be such that it would have changed when I most needed access and wouldn't be able to find out the new one!
 
Always amuses me when I see a van with a gmail or hotmail address on the side of it, the lastest one was a pizza restaurant the missues went to on friday with friends, found the receipt with the left overs she brought back and printed under the address was $[email protected]

@Sidewinder which ISP you on to get a static IP for a home connection (or are you on a business account?) NTL/Virginmedia/whatever they call themseleves this week that I am on don't do them, was going to set up ftp access to my stuff so I can access it remotely, now the dynamic IP address rarely changes, but it could do, and my luck would be such that it would have changed when I most needed access and wouldn't be able to find out the new one!
I have business connections with BT, single static IP, fastest they do in my area.
Also 1GB VM with 5 static IPs.
VM tend to have a sticky IP even if not officially static.
 
I can connect to my Synology directly with Teamviewer which is good.
Though I leave my desktop PC on at all times, so I can gain access to the network through teamviewer and that.
But teamviewer itself is open to attacks.
DYamic DNS is also an option, but again open to attack, and it sounds like the WD implementation of dynamic DNS is what has been hacked here?
 
I can connect to my Synology directly with Teamviewer which is good.
Though I leave my desktop PC on at all times, so I can gain access to the network through teamviewer and that.
But teamviewer itself is open to attacks.
DYamic DNS is also an option, but again open to attack, and it sounds like the WD implementation of dynamic DNS is what has been hacked here?
If it's connected to the internet, it can be hacked.
 
Well, it would appear that some "Hackers" have claimed responsibility for the Western Digital storage systems going down...

https://www.techspot.com/news/98310...bility-western-digital-data-breach-cloud.html


Makes you wonder just how much more frequent these type of problems will be in the future?

I think it was Bill Gates who said something along the lines that the 'Third-World-War' will not be physical tanks & guns taking land....
but more probably a 'Cyber-World-War', Attacking significant swathes of essential services that keep countries, businesses and individuals operating on a daily basis..

So I was just pondering......
How much chaos would be caused if a few bits like.... WhastApp, Apple/Google Pay, Netflix/Amazon/Disney/Sky sports, and a bit of on-line banking,
were all knocked off-line for a couple of months?? [Or more]!!!?

So the bottom line as ALWAYS is....

Make sure any important data that you own or need access to, is NOT 100% reliant upon an external third party..
Who could possibly disappear overnight!
 
Top