No one is safe!
Hackers have demanded a $10 million ransom from Garmin after confirmation the company was the victim of a ransomware attack. The WastedLocker ransomware hit Garmin’s network on Thursday, with one employee telling Bleeping Computer they first noticed something was wrong when they arrived at work on Thursday morning.
The Garmin IT department then tried to remotely shut down all work computers on the network, which they were unable to do, and so told employees to shut down all computers they had access to.
This company-wide shutdown included all devices in their data centre to try and avoid them being encrypted, which explains the global outage currently being experienced.
Garmin issued an apology for the outage yesterday evening, which is entering its third day, also saying they do not believe any customer personal data has been affected.
They say that once Garmin Connect is accessible again, users’ activity data shouldn’t be lost as it is stored on the device and will appear once the user is able to sync their device. They have a page on their website that is showing the status of their platforms and features, all of which are currently down.
The outage affects cyclists using the popular Garmin Edge units, as well as runners, and other athletes who wear the Garmin watches.
Garmin also manufactures Sat Nav devices, lifestyle tracking watches and navigational systems for pilots, meaning the effects of an outage could be more consequential than the loss of a few Strava KOM/QOMs.
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