Disaster strikes

I'm afraid I've rather neglected the blog of late. You know how it is, trying to make progress with the next book and keeping up with life at the same time.

Sadly this return is to announce bad news.attached

While writing Book Two, I stored my manuscript on Network Attached Storage drive. This is a tricky little box with two hard drives, each a mirror image of the other. The idea is that if one fails, your data is safe on the other. I thought it would keep my data safe.

How wrong was I?

This particular box had an internet connection so I could access my files wherever I might be. It was password protected, with a good strong password. I thought it was secure.

Wrong again.

It seems that, sometime in February, a group of hackers found a vulnerability in the D-Link DNS320 operating system which allowed them access without a password.

They then broadcast across the Internet to any connected devices and identified any of the specific model of NAS.

I know from support forums that there must be hundreds.

They then proceeded to encrypt the contents of every disk drive they had access to, leaving a note demanding a ransom for the unencryption of the files.

In common with a lot of D-Link owners, I don't have £900 or so kicking about to send to hackers on the off-chance that I might actually get my files back.

So here I am, with an encrypted hard drive containing the most recent chapters of Book Two, which I can no longer access. I had a backup of some of the earlier chapters but it looks as if I have a fair bit of rewriting to do.

To add insult to injury, a couple of weeks after the attack of the so-called Cr1pt0r ransomeware, D-Link released a patch to fix the vulnerability.

Talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted!

Oh well, enough whining.

Back to the writing.