Re: Security News This Week: Hackers Are Erasing Western Digital Hard Drives Remotely

In article <[email protected]>, Mayayana
<[email protected]> wrote:

> | >   The problem is with "My Book Live", an idiotic and unsafe
> | > "personal cloud" device designed to be accessed from
> | > online. So as with remote desktop, the real problem is with
> | > people thinking it's safe to allow direct access to their
> | > computers from the Internet.
> |
> |  It's not 'idiotic' and it's not 'unsafe'
> 
>   There are some things that can't be made entirely safe.

not just some things. *everything* cannot be made entirely safe.

>   One
> is javascript in browsers. Another is setting up your system
> for remote access. There are reeasons to risk both. There's
> no sensible reason to risk it in order to have a "private cloud".
> Thus, idiotic.
 
there are plenty of reasons for a private cloud, which can be extremely
safe when done correctly. 

part of that requires not using abandoned hardware with unpatched
exploits.

> |  Also note that the reports are about people 'losing all their data'!
> | How is that possible? Did they only have *one* copy of their data?
> 
>   Maybe so, maybe not. That wasn't the point. The point was that
> their disks were erased. Rather shocking, don't you think, backup
> or not? You can pretend there's no risk to what
> you're doing but it just isn't true.

everything has a risk. 

hard drives can fail without any cloud.
fire/flood/etc. can destroy them (and a lot more).
users can mistakenly delete important files.

if the users had multiple copies, then it doesn't matter if one of them
is lost. there are others.