Garmin has been hit by a ransomware attack that encrypted the smartwatch maker's internal servers, forcing it to shut down its call centers, website, and the Garmin Connect service, which users rely on to sync their activity via the mobile app.
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In messages shared on Twitter, the company apologized to users and gave details on the extent of the forced shutdown.
The attack also affected Garmin's aviation database service, flyGarmin, which supports aviation navigational equipment, and some production lines in Asia, according to ZDnet.com.
Officially, Garmin has not referred to the outage as the result of a ransomware attack, but company employees have since taken to Twitter and described it as such.
This outage also affects our call centers, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chats. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and apologize for this inconvenience. (2/2) — Garmin (@Garmin) July 23, 2020
Taiwanese tech news site IThome published an internal memo from Garmin's IT department to its Taiwan-based factories announcing two days of maintenance on Friday and Saturday, which sources told the website was down to a "virus."
(Via The Guardian.)
Top Rated Comments
They’re either paid by the state or doing it for some “cause” where companies have to actually be profitable and pay people. And doing full security on a large scale is simply difficult and expensive. You have layers of issues to deal with from hardware to software to wetware (people). Like with Twitter’s recent security issue, all it takes is one rogue employee (whether enticed or coerced) in the right place to thwart even the best security.
This should provide a warning for people that as we put more faith in online services and governments move to weaken security measures in the name of providing “security to the people” this puts the companies at a big disadvantage and these incidents will only get worse until something forces the industry to change in one form or another.
This is also a testament that you should not trust your data or your service rely on the infrastructure of any company... Garmin is a large enterprise and even them can suffer these attacks, I remember recently an app bugging me to use their cloud client, definitely not! I use OneDrive as main service, iCloud as backup and an old school SSD hard drive just in case.
Was just going to say the same thing. An outage of fitness products is an inconvenience. An outage of aviation products is a matter of flight safety.This is worrisome. Garmin is huge in the aviation industry. Thousands of pilots rely on their navigation equipment. Let's hope that side of their business is better protected.
While I realize this sounds like a “Monday morning quarterback” comment, it doesn’t make it any less crucial.