Smartwatch and wearable maker Garmin shuttered several of its services on July 23 to deal with a ransomware attack that has encrypted its internal network and some production systems.
The company is currently planning a multi-day maintenance window to deal with the aftermath of the attack, which includes shutting down its official website, Garmin Connect user data sync service, and even some production lines in Asia.
In messages shared on his website and Twitter, Garmin said the same outage also affected its call centers, leaving the company unable to answer calls, emails and online chats sent by users.
The incident did not go unnoticed and caused many headaches for the company’s customers, most of whom rely on the Garmin Connect service to sync data about races and bike rides to Garmin’s servers, all of which were discontinued on Thursday. .
Image: Victor Gevers
When ZDNet contacted earlier, a Garmin spokesperson declined to confirm that the outage was caused by a ransomware attack, citing an ongoing investigation, and redirected us to a message the company had shared on its website and Twitter profile.
This outage also affects our call centers, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chat. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and apologize for this inconvenience. (2/2)
– Garmin (@Garmin) July 23, 2020
However, since the incident originated around 03:00 am UTC, several Garmin employees turned to social media to share details about the attack, all calling it a ransomware attack.
Some Garmin employees even attributed the incident to a new variety of ransomware that appeared earlier this year, called WastedLocker, information that ZDNet Failed to verify based on employee complaints.
However, the incident appears to be much bigger and more devastating than Garmin indicated in his opening statement.
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iThome, a Taiwanese tech news dedicated to IT and smart device issues, shared an internal memo that Garmin IT staff sent to its factories in Taiwan, announcing two days of planned maintenance mode for Friday and Saturday, July 24 and July 25.
While the memo did not specifically blame the makeshift maintenance mode for a ransomware attack, sources told the Taiwanese news site that the incident was caused by a “virus”.
In today’s cybersecurity landscape, only ransomware attacks have the destructive effect of causing companies to shut down production lines, online services, websites, email servers, and call centers within hours. and go into maintenance mode.
Meanwhile, Garmin users have been sharing online tips on how to save race and bike information on Garmin partner services, such as Strava, to avoid losing your training information until Garmin resolves your current interruption.
to all people freaking out because @garmin @GarminFitness services have been idle for more than 7 hours: mount your watch via USB on your computer-> navigate to the activities directory-> grab today’s .fit file-> load it manually party service (eg strava) -> breath
– Marco Abis (@capotribu) July 23, 2020
This is a developing story. More updates will follow.
