So all WD services are back up and running and we all got a nice email from WD that pretty much says nothing in many nice words, HOWEVER to this date no one knows WTF happened because WD isn’t giving any details.
What I want to know:
-Did the hackers steal data?
-Did the hackers steal customer data?
-Is my data being sold in China or some other godforsaken place?
-Should I change all my 498 user ids and passwords? Or will it even make a difference?
-Why isn’t WD explaining this sh%^$it to their “PAYING” customers?
Yeah, I read this yesterday. They were asking for a “minimum 8 figures”. That’s 10 000 000. They reportedly stole 10 TB of data. So they figured they would ask for 1 million per TB? One day after the hackers went public, letting the world know that they are holding a choke grip on WD, and the services are back online.
I was personally not affected by any of this as I don’t use their NAS products, but for the sake of all WD users and customers, I really want to believe that they paid up, if no other solution was found. I could not care less about WD itself! I have not seen this level of incompetence and corporate arrogance.
I hope they take a few lessons from all of this and adapt accordingly, because they sure need to. It only takes me five minutes to visit and examine their many websites, and I can tell what kind of company this is. It’s not one with a strong focus on software, and the organization is in disarray, and customer service experience is worse than talking to a robot. All they care for is making a healthy profit.
I myself have come across various flaws on their websites over the years and I have reported directly to WD and made suggestions, none of which they have implemented. They just kept paddling the old boat until it started taking in water, and then they still kept paddling… so I’m not surprised by any of this. This is not the first time they have a major cybersecurity incident.
Perhaps most telling is this! Amid the mounting pressure from customers, their CEO deleted his Twitter profile @davidgoeckeler: “This account doesn’t exist”. He ran off on vacation? Deleting your account is a very drastic measure. If he wanted to stick his head in the sand, and ignore the noise, all he had to do was to log out of Twitter or uninstall the app, till the dust settles. The boat is sinking and the captain is abandoning ship?
If they want to be a software focused company, and offer cloud storage services going forward, they need to invest more of that profit back into software and security. Seeing their track record, I will never entrust WD to store and protect my data.
