Garmin continues battle to restore systems
- by Nick Cohen
- in Industry
- — Jul 28, 2020
Garmin said in a statement Monday that it has started restoring services following a ransomware attack that locked "some" systems on July 23. The company says that they are unable to receive calls, online chats and emails for now and are working on resolving the issue.
Although Garmin Connect was not accessible during the outage, activity and 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, according to the company.
Garmin's app, nevertheless, is still reporting server upkeep and the Garmin status page just recently went offline, so Garmin users may not remain in the clear yet. A company-wide shutdown of devices to prevent the possibility of encryption by attackers has reportedly been put into place; thus causing the shut down of the connected services.
"Garmin has no indication that this outage has afflicted your data, such as action, payment or other particular information", it proceeds.
After several days of outages and reports of a ransomware attack, Garmin has restored some online functionality to its wearable fitness trackers. But a person familiar with the incident response told The Associated Press the attackers had turned over decryption keys that would allow Garmin to unlock the data scrambled in the attack.
Fitness enthusiasts took to social media to vent their frustration about not being able to use the service.
Initially, the corporation reported tiny about the difficulties, and then verified that it was suffering an outage. Final decision will be at the discretion of the Taipei Times. A new type of ransomware called WastedLocker is believed to have been behind the attack, according to the reports.
Evidence is emerging the attack involved a ransomware strain known as WastedLocker, which security researchers suspect comes from a Russian hacking group known as Evil Corp. This is because the watch can't collect location data so as to track the runs or do any calculations whatsoever or even connect to Global Positioning System in order to guide them for their route.