Seagate closes up careless flaws in its wireless hard drives

Security researchers have found several flaws in Seagate's revolutionary wireless hard drives that open the doors to hackers.

First reported by The Register, the range of wireless hard drives contain as many as three flaws that allow anyone with access to your network to use a simple username and password combo to download all the information and replace it with malware.

The wireless hard disk, which packs a hard drive and Wi-Fi controller into one package and allows a wide range of devices to access the data, includes an 'undocumented Telnet service' that can be accessed by simply chancing your arm with 'root' as the username and password. Once inside attackers have unrestricted file download capabilities and can do anything from stealing all your files and wiping your hard drive clean to replacing every file with malware versions that could wreak havoc on any device that connects to the drive.

How to fix it

Seagate has acted fast to address the problems by releasing new firmware, version 3.4.1.105, and it confirmed that this addresses all vulnerabilities. The drives affected include the Seagate Wireless Plus Mobile Storage, Seagate Wireless Mobile Storage and LaCie FUEL.

As well as downloading the new firmware, Seagate has told owners of the wireless hard drives to check the Seagate Download Finder on a regular basis to find out whether new firmware is available.

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