Western Digital has issued a warning for owners of My Book Live and My Book Live Duo devices. These external HDDs received their final firmware update in 2015 and now, some users are finding their external HDDs compromised, leading to a factory reset and data loss.

The issue was first raised by users on WD's support forum, where customers began confirming that their drives had been wiped and as Ars Technica reports, some also lost access to their WD Live accounts afterwards too. The drives appear to be compromised by malicious software, which can be triggered remotely.

Western Digital was quick to comment on the issue, warning owners of these devices to disconnect them from the internet to avoid data loss:

“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.”

The cause of the issue is still being investigated, but updates should come as soon as more information is available.

KitGuru Says: Do any of you still use a WD My Book Live device for data storage? Have you encountered this issue?

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