Another Major Exploit Hits Western Digital Devices

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It looks like another major exploit is impacting Western Digital backup solutions and you might want to read this if you use them to store anything important.

Photo by Pixabay from Pexels.

As we reported earlier this week, Western Digital’s WD My Book Live and WD My Book Live Duo were both hit by a pair of issues that are basically rendering them into bricks

And now it looks like something different is hitting devices that use My Cloud OS3 such as the EX2 Ultra. This exploit was discovered by researchers Radek Domanski and Pedro Riberio who reported on this issue just as My Cloud OS5 released which fixed it. Users are advised to upgrade their device's OS to My Cloud OS5. But even that is creating problems for people with a lot of data on their drives, PetaPixel reports, chief among them being the length of time it takes to index the files on the drive.

Luckily for us, though probably not really helping anything ultimately, Western Digital provided a lengthy explanation as to why people should go on ahead and upgrade to My Cloud OS5 because they have no intention of updating My Cloud OS3.

“The My Cloud OS 5 release is a major upgrade that comprehensively upgrades the security architecture of the My Cloud operating system. Like all major operating system upgrades, the upgrade from OS 3 to OS 5 introduced new functionality and retired some older features that were infrequently used or had security concerns. Since the initial release in October of 2020, we have released updates to My Cloud OS 5 every month to respond to customer feedback, address issues, and restore top-used functionality that was omitted from the original release.

To clarify, the upgrade from My Cloud OS 3 to OS 5 has never required complete deletion of storage media. In other cases, functionality is now provided in a different form or application; for instance, the WD Sync and SmartWare applications have been replaced with Acronis True Image for Western Digital, which offers backup and ransomware protection in a single application for Windows and Mac computers. We believe that My Cloud OS 5 offers the best and most secure personal cloud experience we’ve ever released and continue to recommend that all eligible OS 3 users upgrade as soon as possible.

And if you don’t own a My Cloud OS5-compatible device? Well, you can buy another Western Digital product though we doubt consumers will be inclined towards that option if they’ve had a negative experience.

Do you own any of the impacted Western Digital Devices? Let us know if you’ve experienced any kind of data loss in the comments below.

Don’t forget to check out our other photography news on Light Stalking at this link right here.

[PetaPixel]

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Kehl is our staff photography news writer since 2017 and has over a decade of experience in online media and publishing and you can get to know him better here and follow him on Insta.

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