Nothing has worked at Garmin for over 24 hours. A ransomware attack is said to have paralyzed the company’s servers. The system failure also affects support.
“We are currently experiencing a system failure,” the provider of wearables and fitness services Garmin announced on Thursday afternoon on Twitter. Even 24 hours later, on Friday afternoon, the Garmin site, Garmin Connect and the app were not accessible. Accordingly, users could not synchronize their data between smartphones and Garmin devices such as smartwatches or fitness trackers.
System failure paralyzes Garmin
Users reported problems with Garmin devices on Thursday morning. First Garmin explained the whole thing with “maintenance work”. The provider later spoke of a system failure. This failure also affected support, including telephone, email and chat. Accordingly, it is not possible to contact the manufacturer. Garmin is working on a solution, the company promised.
We currently have a system failure that also affects Garmin Connect. As a result, the Garmin Connect website and app are currently unavailable.
(1/2)— Garmin D-A-CH (@GarminDACH) July 23, 2020
It was not officially announced that the cause of the system failure was a ransomware attack. However, observers suspect a hacker attack. The Taiwanese want evidence of this Website IT-Home have found. Colleagues rely on an internal message from the company to employees at the Taiwan office, such as Netzwelt writes. ZD-Net too speaks specifically of a ransomware attack and relies on messages from Garmin employees on Twitter – but did not link to it.
Garmin infected by ransomware wastedlocker?
The IT security company G-Data thinksthat in the Garmin case it could be the ransomware wastedlocker. This ransomware is often used by criminals to scout so-called high-value targets and sometimes to extort millions of dollars. Since May this year, a group called Evilcorp has been using this ransomware.
According to reports, Garmin’s production and development will be shut down for two days. If it is really a ransomware attack, it could also take longer for the company to be able to act again. If a decryption fails or if the data would not be accessible again despite payment of the ransom, the training data of many users could be lost.
Some data can be saved
Only recent workouts are saved on the devices themselves. Data collected from the smartphone is sent directly to the cloud when it is synchronized. But there is at least the possibility to save the last performed activities: To do this, connect the Garmin device to your computer via USB in the Activities folder for .fit files – and then upload them manually to a service such as Strava.
More on the subject:
