Garmin has officially confirmed the reports of a cyber-attack on its devices and services. This cyber-attack took place a few days back which caused synchronization issues for the users among other inconveniences. However, Garmin did not confirm whether this attack was a ransomware attack or the leading wearables manufacturer was just another prey of the unpopular WastedLocker virus.
Garmin Released the following statement regarding the cyber attacks
“Garmin Ltd., today announced it was the victim of a cyber attack that encrypted some of our systems on July 23, 2020. As a result, many of our online services were interrupted including website functions, customer support, customer facing applications, and company communications. We immediately began to assess the nature of the attack and started remediation. We have no indication that any customer data, including payment information from Garmin Pay™, was accessed, lost or stolen. Additionally, the functionality of Garmin products was not affected, other than the ability to access online services.”
“Affected systems are being restored and we expect to return to normal operation over the next few days. We do not expect any material impact to our operations or financial results because of this outage. As our affected systems are restored, we expect some delays as the backlog of information is being processed. We are grateful for our customers’ patience and understanding during this incident and look forward to continuing to provide the exceptional customer service and support that has been our hallmark and tradition.”
Possibility of a ransomware attack makes it much more complex than just reinstating the systems simply through the backups. Forensics and IT specialists need to make sense of how the systems was hacked into and whether there are any loopholes. There is also a need to figure out which of the back ups is not compromised as there is a huge possibility of the virus making its way into the backup as well.