Security researcher James Bercegay found a glaring security hole in the Western Digital MyCloud family of storage devices back in June 2017.
He discovered that, amongst other vulnerabilities, a hidden firmware backdoor allowed anyone to login remotely, using the username mydlinkBRionyg, and the somewhat underwhelming password abc12345cba.
Which is really rather handy I have to admit, especially if you’re the kind of person who finds remembering passwords a right royal pain in the backside and want to access your personal stored files while you’re away from home.
What isn’t quite so marvellous is that, sadly, someone might use the same credentials (and yes, they are apparently the same on all affected WD devices) to log into your personal files remotely. In fact, the existence of default login credentials could even be used in a Mirai-style attack.
The following Western Digital devices are said to be vulnerable:
- My Cloud
- My Cloud Mirror
- My Cloud Gen 2
- My Cloud PR2100
- My Cloud PR4100
- My Cloud EX2 Ultra
- My Cloud EX2
- My Cloud EX4
- My Cloud EX2100
- My Cloud EX4100
- My Cloud DL2100
- My Cloud DL4100
Like any good vulnerability researcher, Bercegay informed the vendor about the problem, and Western Digital requested that he wait 90 days before publicly disclosing the flaw, giving them time to fix it.
Unfortunately, after six months, Western Digital still hadn’t issued any fixes. So, now we all know about it.
And that seems to have – finally – stirred Western Digital into action. Customers are advised to install firmware version 2.30.174 to remove the bonkers backdoor.
Regular readers will note that this isn’t the first time that WD My Cloud devices have been found to contain concerning vulnerabilities.
https://blog.westerndigital.com/western-digital-cloud-update/ stats that fix is in 2.30.172 not 2.30.174
Hmm. That's odd. Bercegay in his disclosure says that the fix is to update to firmware version 2.30.174. Maybe WD fixed it in 2.30.172, but they had got to 2.30.174 by the time of Bercegay's advisory? It's a mystery…
Anyway, WD My Cloud users – update to the latest version, whatever that is.
"and won't to access your personal stored files"
Whoops. Typo fixed. Thanks
Updating my Mycloud as we speak but it says latest version is 04.05.00.320
Confused!!
They're not the only culprits for this kind of underhand and short-sighted practice. These IP cameras have definitely got a hard-coded user:pass that is not documented or user-manageable. http://amzn.to/2Dpeym3
And it's on their uncloseable telnet port! *eyeroll*
Note the 'D-Link' connection… D-Link SUCK at security, in my (limited) experience…
Mr. Cluley,
Thank you for "the hardcoded password for your WD My Cloud NAS device" very much appreciated. I have a question which I hope you might have a direction or answer for me. I have a WD My Cloud Mirror and recently it's power light has been blinking blue and will not allow me to have access to my information.
Do you know if there is anything I can do to fix this?
Thank you so much,
Michael
I am also confused. Looking for real root-access (some files are not accessible/editable from ssh user in putty or winscp) I stumbled onto this article. It is 2021 now and I just checked my WD MyCloud EX4. The above hack doesn't work, the firmware version number is 2.12.127 (!). The last update is supposed to have been at "Thursday 2020 november 19 14:49:24" and after checking it reports that there are no updates available. Actually I am pleasantly surprised that WD updated this device's firmware so recently (probably only a security update, perhaps due to above mentioned vulnerability) since it is several years old and has still some quite outdated software (undoubtable also with security issues) like a very, very old MYSQL and PHP/phpMyadmin version. Also apps like "Joomla!" are very old and as good as obsolete indeed. I was hoping they would have updated that also, but alas…