how to secure a MyCloud? Is it already too late? - ubuntu-14.04

Question

My laptop is running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. I have a WMD MyCloud that I am doing backups to with an rsync. The rsync calls usually end with an error.
Some things I have observed. The MyCloud machine has a REST API and I see that someone has tried to hack that. As far as I can tell, the attempt did not succeed.
My backup does this from my laptop, to the MyCloud:
/usr/bin/rsync -a -z -v /home/me/ root#192.168.1.82:/shares/me
Usually I get:
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (93239 bytes received so far) [sender]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(226) [sender=3.1.0]
and the rsync process is returning 12.
Oddly, if I use a second -v, the process usually succeeds. Why would that be? It is too fast without the second -v?
Something I saw worries me. Again, this is the output on my laptop, running rsync to copy to the MyCloud:
*** stack smashing detected ***: <unknown> terminated
rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (11387 bytes received so far) [sender]
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(226) [sender=3.1.0]
and it returns 12. Ouch!
So, does this mean my laptop is infected with something, presumably Heartbleed or something like it?
On my laptop:
$ rsync -h
rsync version 3.1.0 protocol version 31
...
On the MyCloud:
# rsync -h
rsync version 3.0.9 protocol version 30
...
Am I just screwed? Do I just need to update the stuff on the MyCloud? I have updated by Ubuntu laptop several times. Did that not prevent an infection on this machine?
Open to any suggestions.