Garmin worldwide blocked by cyber-blackmail attack

Users of American Garmin products - including popular navigators and fitness trackers - experienced synchronization problems this week. Today it turned out that the failure is systemic: Garmin has become a victim of cyber ransomware.

The first reports of outages appeared on Wednesday, July 22, but the company initially attributed them to scheduled server maintenance.

On Thursday it became known that we are talking about the infection of Garmin systems with a ransomware encryption virus: as a rule, those who launched it issue a decryption key in exchange for a large amount of bitcoins. The company itself has not yet officially recognized this, but all its employees on social networks adhere only to this version, writes The Guardian.

Not only is Garmin Connect, its key consumer service, down, but so is its website and help services. The flyGarmin service with databases and updates for aviation navigation systems and the Garmin Pilot flight planner are not available. Flights are not allowed without updating the bases, the newspaper notes.

Most sources link the attack to the relatively new WastedLocker ransomware , which the Evil Corp group is suspected of being involved in. For two of its participants, Russians in the United States, a reward of $ 5 million has been appointed .

As a rule, it is cheaper for companies to pay off. This recently happened to online currency exchange Travelex, which paid the hackers $2.3 million.