Garmin is subject to a $10 million ransom demand from hackers according to Cycling Weekly. It has been confirmed that the company was the victim of a ransomware attack last week.
Garmin has just expanded its range of solar-powered adventure smartwatches so this could not have come at a worse time. Reports also suggest that incidents of ransomware are likely to occur more regularly and have a larger impact on businesses. This is potentially a demonstration of just how serious ransomware and hacking can be.
Garmin subject to a massive ransomware demand
The WastedLocker ransomware hit Garmin’s network on Thursday, July 23. One employee pointed out that they first noticed something going wrong when arriving at work that day.
In response to the problem faced, Garmin IT tried to shut down all the computers on their system. However, they were unable to do this successfully. Instead, they instructed employees to shut down all computers that they had access to.
Rumours and reports suggest that the hackers are demanding $10 million as ransom from Garmin. However, this is yet to be confirmed by an official source.
Garmin apologies to users
Garmin issued an apology on Saturday, July 25 for the power outage. This outage has now gone on for three days and there is no indication as to when it will come back online.
The company said, “we want to extend our sincerest apology for the inconvenience the outage has caused for our customers”.
Currently, Garmin believes that no personal data has been compromised. The company has also responded to a number of frequently asked question on its website. This should hopefully alleviate some users fears. However, understandably many will be feeling very anxious about the situation.
Garmin have also said that once its systems are back online, users activity data should not be lost. In theory, it will have been stored on their devices and will then be uploaded when they are able to sync with an online system.
Fortunately, not everything has been compromised by this breach. It seems that inReach SOS and messaging features have not been affected. These continue to be operational despite all other systems being down.
However, most products and devices are affected by the breach. Cyclists using Garmin Edge units, as well as runners, and other athletes who wear the Garmin watches are all unable to access Garmin systems.
The breach is also likely to affect Strava users and other SatNav devices. Garmin is also unable to operate call centres and customer service online chat services.
Hopefully, Garmin will be able to resolve this situation soon. However, the effect of this breach could be wide-ranging and a wake-up call for many other companies.