Garmin resumes operations after a five-day outage caused by a cyberattack, the US maker of smartwatches and navigation systems said on Monday.
Read also: Garmin outage does not affect customer data
"Several systems and services affected by the recent outage, including (the platform) Garmin Connect, are back in operation," Garmin said in an online statement. The company envisages a "return to normalcy" within a few days. "The use of certain functions remains limited" , the time to catch up in terms of data processing. The Garmin Connect app allows millions of users to measure and record health information such as heart rate, number of steps, intensity of exercise, and more. from connected objects such as watches.
This weekend, the manufacturer's priority was to restore this service and reassure its users about the protection of their data. " We have no indication that any customer data, including payment data, has been hacked, lost or stolen," Garmin reiterated on Monday.
Extortion software
The company says it was the victim of a cyberattack last Thursday, which affected applications, its website, customer support services and the communications department. The attack "encrypted some of our systems," Garmin says, without elaborating.
According to anonymous sources from the specialized site TechCrunch, the hackers used extortion software (ransomware). Typically, this type of malware blocks access to a site or computer until the victim sends a sum of money against the key to regain control. TechCrunch adds that it would be in this case the software "WastedLocker", a specialty of a group of Russian hackers called "Evil Corp.". Garmin also said its air navigation services, including flyGarmin, were fully operational.
