Western Digital network breach takes My Cloud services offline

Western Digital, the California data storage manufacturer, said it identified a network security incident on 26 March 2023 in which an unauthorized third party gained access to a number of its systems. The company disclosed the intrusion publicly on 3 April and said the attacker had obtained data from those systems, while noting it was still working to establish what.

Western Digital took systems and services offline as a containment measure. The resulting outage covered My Cloud, My Cloud Home, My Cloud Home Duo, My Cloud OS5, SanDisk ibi and the SanDisk Ixpand Wireless Charger. Users saw 503 errors, and cloud, proxy, web, authentication, email and push notification functions were unavailable. Owners of local devices were locked out as well, because authentication ran through the My Cloud service.

The company engaged outside security and forensic experts and notified law enforcement. It acknowledged that its own protective measures had disrupted parts of its business operations, though manufacturing continued.

My Cloud service was restored on 13 April 2023. In an update issued on 5 May, Western Digital said the attacker had taken a copy of a database used by its online store containing customer names, billing and shipping addresses, email addresses and telephone numbers, together with hashed and salted passwords and partial credit card numbers. Access to online store accounts was expected to return the week of 15 May.