Fitness Tech Giant Garmin Alleged Victim of Ransomware Attack
The company’s main services, such as Garmin Connect and flyGarmin were shut down as were its call centers, and ability to receive emails or online chats.
Cybertech
| 26/07/2020
https://twitter.com/Garmin
Fitness tech maker Garmin was forced to shut down numerous services this past week due to a ransomware attack, according to multiple reports. Several media reports are attributing the attack to the WastedLocker ransomware, though this has yet to be confirmed.
Millions of users of several of Garmin’s fitness tech products, including its smartwatches, were unable to connect to sync their watches to retrieve data and user activity, due to the shutdown of Garmin Connect. Additionally, the flyGarmin website and mobile app, which provide services for aviation navigation, were down.
While the company has not directly addressed the alleged cyberattack it has issued a statement on its website, dubbing the incident an “outage.”
"We are currently experiencing an outage that affects Garmin.com and Garmin Connect. This outage also affects our call centers, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chats. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and apologize for this inconvenience," the company said in a statement.
A dedicated page to the outage listed frequently asked questions and assured users that the outage would not affect their data. The site stated that the "health and wellness data collected from Garmin devices during the outage is stored on the device and will appear in Garmin Connect once the user syncs their device."
Additionally, the site stated that Garmin has "no indication” that the outage affected “data, including activity, payment or other personal information."
The company’s main services, such as Garmin Connect and flyGarmin were shut down as were its call centers, and ability to receive emails or online chats.
https://twitter.com/Garmin
Fitness tech maker Garmin was forced to shut down numerous services this past week due to a ransomware attack, according to multiple reports. Several media reports are attributing the attack to the WastedLocker ransomware, though this has yet to be confirmed.
Millions of users of several of Garmin’s fitness tech products, including its smartwatches, were unable to connect to sync their watches to retrieve data and user activity, due to the shutdown of Garmin Connect. Additionally, the flyGarmin website and mobile app, which provide services for aviation navigation, were down.
While the company has not directly addressed the alleged cyberattack it has issued a statement on its website, dubbing the incident an “outage.”
"We are currently experiencing an outage that affects Garmin.com and Garmin Connect. This outage also affects our call centers, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chats. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and apologize for this inconvenience," the company said in a statement.
A dedicated page to the outage listed frequently asked questions and assured users that the outage would not affect their data. The site stated that the "health and wellness data collected from Garmin devices during the outage is stored on the device and will appear in Garmin Connect once the user syncs their device."
Additionally, the site stated that Garmin has "no indication” that the outage affected “data, including activity, payment or other personal information."
