If you own one of Western Digital’s My Book Live external hard drives, it’s important that you unplug it immediately to avoid all the data potentially being wiped.
As Ars Technica reports, a growing number of users are discovering their My Book Live data has been wiped without warning. Western Digital believes malicious software is causing the drive wipes and has issued the following advisory on its community website:
“Western Digital has determined that some My Book Live devices are being compromised by malicious software. 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. We understand that our customers’ data is very important. At this time, we recommend you disconnect your My Book Live from the Internet to protect your data on the device. We are actively investigating and we will provide updates to this thread when they are available.”
Although Western Digital stopped selling the My Book Live devices in 2015, they proved popular due to their inclusion of an Ethernet port allowing files to be accessed from anywhere. Now it seems that feature has come back to haunt the company, but it’s unclear if the malicious software is targeted at Western Digital or individual owners at the moment.
If you own a My Book Live, after you’ve disconnected it from the internet consider backing up either using a cloud backup service to secure your data or by seeing this as the perfect excuse to invest in a new NAS or external hard drive.
