US data storage provider Western Digital (WD) has suffered a cyberattack and its cloud services have been offline for a week.
Western Digital’s MyCloud service has been down since April 2 after the company said it was taking certain systems offline in the wake of a cyberattack.
On April 2, the company announced it had suffered a “network security incident involving some of its systems.”
WD said it had identified a network security incident on March 26, involving an unauthorized third party gaining access to a number of the company’s systems in an “ongoing incident.”
“The company is implementing proactive measures to secure its business operations including taking systems and services offline and will continue taking additional steps as appropriate,” WD said. The company hasn’t provided further updates since.
The initial outage to MyCloud was also reported on April 2, according to the company’s status page, with a follow-up the next day apologizing for the service interruption. Neither post provided any details on the cause or a potential timeline for remediation, nor did they officially link the outage to the security incident.
Bleeping Computer notes the outage has prevented users from accessing files stored on their local WD NAS devices, as it required access to the company's cloud services.
In a subsequent update five days later, the company is offering a workaround that allows users access to files from a computer connected to the same network as the impacted devices.
“Product Owners of My Cloud Home, My Cloud Home Duo, and SanDisk ibi: We are currently experiencing a service interruption that is preventing files access and use of the applications provided for your product, including the mobile, desktop, and web apps,” the company said in a service status update posted over Easter weekend on April 7. “During this service interruption, you may now access files stored locally on your device using a feature called Local Access.”
“We continue to make every effort to restore all services as quickly as possible and will provide updates as we have them. We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate the patience of our user community as we continue our urgent efforts to restore all services.”
Numerous other parts of WD’s website are also down, with the company saying it is unable to process orders at this time. The company has limited who can reply to its social media posts about the outage.
Another incident involving WD in 2021 saw My Book Live NAS owners have their devices factory reset.