Hackers compromise Western Digital's two network-attached storage devices

Apparently, cyber criminals have used a sophisticated trojan to infect Western Digital storage systems and factory reset them.

Thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, virtual office meetings, and online classes have become a new normal. And, also it has fast tracked the digital lifestyle adoption rate around the world and more data is being stored on cloud space systems than ever before, as it offers the convenience of downloading content anytime at any place.

However, it is also attracting cybercriminals to hack cloud storage to steal the personal information or trade secrets of a particular corporate company.

In the latest incident, Western Digital's Network-Attached Storage (NAS)-based My Book Live series devices have been compromised.

Already, some customers have completely lost all the information in the devices as bad actors using remote execution techniques have reportedly triggered factory reset.

Apparently, they have used a sophisticated trojan with filename-- “.nttpd,1-ppc-be-t1-z”, which is a Linux ELF binary compiled for the PowerPC architecture used by the My Book Live and Live Duo.

The company has acknowledged the threat and initiated an internal investigation. Also, it has begun alerting the subscribers to disconnect the My Book Live and My Book Live Duo from the Internet to protect the data on the devices.

"Our investigation of this incident has not uncovered any evidence that Western Digital cloud services, firmware update servers, or customer credentials were compromised. As the My Book Live devices can be directly exposed to the internet through port forwarding, the attackers may be able to discover vulnerable devices through port scanning," Western Digital said in a statement.

Also, there are reports that some customers were able to recover the lost data using third-party storage recovery applications. If you are tech-savvy go for it or else it is better to seek professional help.

For now, owners of My Book Live and My Book Live Duo can follow these instructions as mentioned, here.

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