WD MyCloud Web Services offline causing customers to lose access to their Local NAS Drive Data

[JohnnyCorporalTech]

WD's MyCloud Web services, that are used to access, setup and manage their local MyCloud NAS Devices, have gone offline, leaving Customers locked out of accessing the Data stored on their local NAS Drives. 

 

Summary

WD's MyCloud, local NAS Devices, where customers can store Data on their local network connected NAS Devices, seem to be fully reliant on cloud services to function at all. As of the time of writing, the WD MyCloud Web services have been down for over 12 hours, leaving customers unable to access data on their local devices. 

 

Looking at the Service Status of the outage, just about all functionality of these devices is completely broken - status.mycloud.com

 

While customers can configure to enable access to the device locally on the network without the use of the mycloud cloud utility. THIS FUNCTION CAN ONLY BE ENABLED VIA THE CLOUD UTILITY!!!! So, for those of us who didn't foresee such issues, and just expected that we would be able to access out data locally if something ever happened to the cloud service! We are all completely out of luck! 

 

One Customer of the WD forum wrote;

Quote

The outage, with no details as to why it has happened, is bad enough. But whilst it is ongoing, I can’t access anything on my My Cloud Home. If access to the My Cloud Home is not possible without connection to the My Cloud service, what is going to happen once support is withdrawn? Will this render the device unusable? Or will we be given full local access, without the need to login?

 

My thoughts

Given how completely the functionality of these devices has been broken after WD's cloud services went offline, it certainly does make me worry about how much our devices are reliant on cloud-based services, and when these services go down or when they are no longer supported, what happens to all our own personal data. Especially considering this is a device that is installed and connected on the customers local network, such reliance on cloud services is almost like planned obsolescence getting backed into the device from the beginning, 

 

Sources

https://status.mycloud.com/os4

https://community.wd.com/t/my-cloud-home-service-outage-02-apri-2023/282845

https://support-en.wd.com/app/answers/detailweb/a_id/34991/~/how-to-enable-local-network-access-to-data-on-my-cloud-home-using-the-dashboard

[DrMacintosh]

We use M365, to date their uptime for SharePoint and OneDrive has been insane. That being said, tomorrow I will be syncing and backing up every one of our Sharepoint document libraries to Backblaze (I know this is ghetto, but I haven't been given a budget to build a system to run Veeam backup for M365). I've always worried about cloud services going down and data loss. This way, we'll have a local copy of our data somewhere we can get at it, and a cloud backup we can restore from (assuming Backblaze doesn't also die). 

 

Anyway, make backups people and remember to not use consumer services for production environments if it can be avoided! 

[19_blackie_73]

How the frick did anyone think this is a good idea to link a cloud service with the access to the locally stored data?

How stupid is that?

Isn't that the whole point of having a NAS - not relying on an external factor such as google drive or other similar services?

[Mark Kaine]

11 minutes ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

How the frick did anyone think this is a good idea to link a cloud service

no one ever thought this is a good idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

to link a cloud service with the access to the locally stored data?

Marketing

[Alex Atkin UK]

Absolutely baffling that by default it would disable LAN access.  It means any of these devices left in retail channels, should the service be withdrawn, become e-waste.

[jaslion]

12 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Absolutely baffling that by default it would disable LAN access.  It means any of these devices left in retail channels, should the service be withdrawn, become e-waste.

I mean thats the point

[Fasterthannothing]

  

[LAwLz]

Sigh...

The NAS:es are not "fully reliably on cloud services to function at all" and not all customers are locked out of their locally stored files.

 

What's down is the control panel where you can manage settings.

The problem is that local access is disabled by default, and requires the control panel to enable. People who didn't enable local access before the service went down can't enable local access. I think that's the news story here, that local access is disabled by default and requires a connection to WD's servers to enable. That you can't enable it without access to WD's servers is bad design if you ask me, but that is a completely different story from the whole narrative of "it doesn't work without a connection! It is a brick and you can't access your files!".

 

If you could access your locally stored files locally before the outage, then you can still do so even during the outage.

What doesn't work is enabling local access during the outage, because the function to allow that is controlled by the WD servers.

 

I hope that explains a bit more what is actually happening.

It's a bad situation. There is no need to misinterpret what is happening to make it sound worse.

 

[leadeater]

8 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

no one ever thought this is a good idea ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

WD did 

[leadeater]

21 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

That you can't enable it without access to WD's servers is bad design if you ask me, but that is a completely different story from the whole narrative of "it doesn't work without a connection! It is a brick and you can't access your files!".

Long term it pretty much does though. Lets say you forget and you go to replace all the HDDs in the NAS and you aren't going to keep the data, moved it elsewhere or w/e, which basically does a factory reset with a new install of the base OS on to the new disks. Well the default is cloud required so you better hope those original disks will get you booted back in prior to any changes or you just shaped yourself a very nice paper weight heh.

 

It may not be the specific situation now but it may as well be.

 

WD need to release an update that at boot if no internet then enable local access.

[LAwLz]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Long term it pretty much does though. Lets say you forget and you go to replace all the HDDs in the NAS and you aren't going to keep the data, moved it elsewhere or w/e, which basically does a factory reset with a new install of the base OS on to the new disks. Well the default is cloud required so you better hope those original disks will get you booted back in prior to any changes or you just shaped yourself a very nice paper weight heh.

 

It may not be the specific situation now but it may as well be.

I am not saying WD designed this well, or that their design decision couldn't lead to issues in some situations, but my point is that the narrative is very twisted. Some people reading these news seem to think that local access relies on WD's cloud server, which it absolutely doesn't.

The only people who can't access their files through local access during this outage, are the same people who couldn't access their files through local access before the outage. 

 

The fact that you can't open up local file access without using their cloud servers is an issue, but it's a very different issue from "accessing local files requires a cloud connection".

[jagdtigger]

9 hours ago, 19_blackie_73 said:

How the frick did anyone think this is a good idea to link a cloud service with the access to the locally stored data?

Planned obsolescence, if a product doesnt bring in profit anymore just pull the plug of the online service.....

[leadeater]

39 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

The only people who can't access their files through local access during this outage, are the same people who couldn't access their files through local access before the outage.

Far as I can tell that'll be almost everyone. Looking at reviews out of the box without turning local access on you still create SMB network shares etc and can map them etc, there are also apps for cloud access to the device. Management can be done from the local IP and from the MyCloud portal. The problem is from what is being described is everything stops entirely if the NAS can't talk to WD even though you connect local shares mapped to a local IP.

 

Sounds like there is connection status checker and a service kill if cannot talk to WD unless local access has been enabled. Could be wrong but the few reviews I looked at none of them showed enabling local access but did show creating cloud accounts in the cloud portal along with network shares then locally connecting them.

 

Not sure it's quite as cut and dry here. Will have to poke around a bit more.

 

Edit:

@LAwLz Ah I see, the review was showing creating of shares and then showed setting up NAS backup/snapshot right after that and was showing screen shots of the Netgear ReadyNAS target for the WD backups. That was a little confusing, skimming too fast,

[jaslion]

41 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Long term it pretty much does though. Lets say you forget and you go to replace all the HDDs in the NAS and you aren't going to keep the data, moved it elsewhere or w/e, which basically does a factory reset with a new install of the base OS on to the new disks. Well the default is cloud required so you better hope those original disks will get you booted back in prior to any changes or you just shaped yourself a very nice paper weight heh.

 

It may not be the specific situation now but it may as well be.

 

WD need to release an update that at boot if no internet then enable local access.

Iomega did this ages before.

 

I have a bunch of "bricked" nas's from them because the only way you could upgrade or change the drives in their old ones was if you had a internet connection that could get the os back on one of the drives. After they discontinued the product (3 years after launch) the connection was broken and the only way you could upgrade the drive was to mirror the old os onto new ones. If that failed you were sol.

 

They also had a cloud access feature which after the servers shut down didn't work anymore logically. However it was constantly crashing which really slowed down the nas and if you set up a 2fa on the nas you couldn't turn it off since 2fa was well no longer there to send you an email. So basically you had to keep using your slow nas who's settings were now inaccessible OR reset it and not have an os on it anymore.

 

There was also never a download offered for the os and a small group of people managed to make a way to get it onto the drives if you didn't have it via linux commandline.

 

Once the service goes ofline for these devices I expect the same situation.

[Vishera]

Trust no one, when i need a NAS i make my own NAS.

 

[Arika]

1 minute ago, Vishera said:

Trust no one, when i need a NAS i make my own NAS.

 

my NAS is powered by my old 7600k

 

i sure love when companies tie everything to online services. in this case, yes you can have them accessible locally without internet, but the fact that you have the specifically turn it on is some absolute crap.

[leadeater]

Hope this helps those who have one, couple posts from people saying it also worked for them.

 

[LAwLz]

25 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Hope this helps those who have one, couple posts from people saying it also worked for them.

 

Wait, X-plore just seems like a normal file explorer that supports SMB.

If those instructions work for people, then what exactly is being blocked? If you can access your files over SMB with the default settings then I don't understand what the issue is. 

[StDragon]

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Wait, X-plore just seems like a normal file explorer that supports SMB.

If those instructions work for people, then what exactly is being blocked? If you can access your files over SMB with the default settings then I don't understand what the issue is. 

lol, the NAS supports SMB v1 which Windows no longer supports. You could probably enable SMB v1 client support via Windows Programs and Features and enable the checkbox.

 

I don't recommend this, but why the NAS would allow access via SMB 1 and not 2 by default is baffling in of itself.

[jagdtigger]

1 minute ago, StDragon said:

but why the NAS would allow access via SMB 1 and not 2 by default is baffling in of itself

Dont have the time and energy to download the FW and rip it apart. Id say they probably use some ancient version of samba..... (TP-Link for example is notorious for doing this, even on routers released a few years ago but the FW runs SW from ~2015 and have a release file referencing openwrt chaos calmer.)

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, StDragon said:

lol, the NAS supports SMB v1 which Windows no longer supports. You could probably enable SMB v1 client support via Windows Programs and Features and enable the checkbox.

 

I don't recommend this, but why the NAS would allow access via SMB 1 and not 2 by default is baffling in of itself.

Source on it only using SMB v1?

The way I read the post from the forum regarding X-plore is that the NAS by default uses SMBv2, but the program X-plore tries to use USBv1 by default so you have to enable "allow SMB2" to get it to connect.

 

The way I read it, it's the X-plore program that someone suggested that uses SMBv1 by default, and the NAS uses SMBv2.

[StDragon]

9 hours ago, LAwLz said:

The way I read it, it's the X-plore program that someone suggested that uses SMBv1 by default, and the NAS uses SMBv2.

I don't have this NAS to confirm, but I figured it was the other way around based on what you've said on X-plore, and the fact MS deprecated SMB v1.

But hey, I could be wrong. Either way WB NAS products suck, so I wouldn't have the luxury of running into such issues. 

[Spotty]

It may actually be a lot worse...

WD took their services offline after being hacked earlier in the week.

 

Quote

Western Digital has shut down several of its services after detecting a security breach on its network, the digital storage giant announced on Monday.

The service outage, announced on April 2, impacts cloud, proxy, web, authentication, email, and push notification services, including My Cloud, My Cloud Home (Duo), My Cloud OS5, SanDisk Ibi, and SanDisk Ixpand Wireless Charger.

In a press release issued on April 3, the company said it’s responding to an ongoing network security incident that involves an unauthorized third party gaining access to “a number” of its systems. 

 

https://www.securityweek.com/western-digital-shuts-down-services-due-to-cybersecurity-breach/amp/

https://www.pcworld.com/article/1681254/western-digitals-my-cloud-goes-down-after-hack.html

 

 

Quote

On March 26, 2023, Western Digital identified a network security incident involving Western Digital’s systems. In connection with the ongoing incident, an unauthorized third party gained access to a number of the Company’s systems.

 

[...]

 

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. As part of its remediation efforts, Western Digital is actively working to restore impacted infrastructure and services. Based on the investigation to date, the Company believes the unauthorized party obtained certain data from its systems and is working to understand the nature and scope of that data.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230402005076/en/Western-Digital-Provides-Information-on-Network-Security-Incident

[LAwLz]

5 hours ago, StDragon said:

I don't have this NAS to confirm, but I figured it was the other way around based on what you've said on X-plore, and the fact MS deprecated SMB v1.

But hey, I could be wrong. Either way WB NAS products suck, so I wouldn't have the luxury of running into such issues. 

I really dislike this type of mentality.

What happened was that you assumed poor design from WD, laughed at it and felt validated in your decision to dislike them, and when someone pointed out that it was wrong you went "okay, but they still suck".

 

The problem with this mentality is that it breeds fanboy-ism (or rather, the reverse of fanboys). You shouldn't go "I don't like this product so I am probably right if I assume they suck" because mentally you will probably still remember this as being right. If you make 9 incorrect assumptions (and let's assume it gets pointed out that you are incorrect) and 1 correct one, you will still remember that brand as "the one who constantly have issues because I vaguely remember like 10 bad things about them".

You got a preconceived notion that you constantly validate by assuming things. It becomes a loop of negativity that constantly tries to validate itself which might all be based on incorrect assumptions and preconceptions.

 

Don't assume things, and don't brush it off like "well I am still right in a way" when proven wrong. I understand that it's an easy thing to do and I am probably guilty of it myself from time to time, but it's a very bad attitude to have.