The whole idea behind having a network-attached storage (NAS) is to allow you to access files stored in them without having to be plugged in. These days, you can access said files from just about anywhere as long as you are connected to the internet. But for users of Western Digital NAS, this has been made impossible following a recent hack that the company suffered, which prompted the temporary shutting down of its My Cloud service.
In a statement, Western Digital says that the “network security incident” happened on 26 March, two weekends ago. As part of the incident, the hacker has “gained access to a number of the company’s systems”. For what it’s worth, the company is already investigating the incident, but said investigation is still in its early stages, so details are likely to be scarce.
Following the incident, Western Digital is taking “proactive measures to secure its business operations”, which involves turning off online systems and services. On one hand, it makes sense, as the hacker may have access to user data as part of said company’s systems. But on the other, while the company says that it is “actively working to restore impacted infrastructure and services”, no time frame was provided. The company also says that while working on a fix, services may continue to be disrupted. So affected users may be in for quite the wait depending on the way things pan out.
Speaking of disrupted services, it’s safe to say that everything that is related to the Western Digital My Cloud service is rendered inoperable, at least temporarily. That’s not to say that files stored in the affected NAS are stuck there indefinitely. But it does mean that you’ll have to be connected to the same wireless network to access them, rather than just anywhere with an internet connection. You can check the My Cloud Service Status page linked below to see if the situation improves, but as mentioned, it’s probably going to take awhile.
(Source: Western Digital [1], [2])
