The American company Garmin, which develops smartwatches with a navigation system, was attacked by the WastedLocker ransomware. Although the infection occurred on July 23, the release about it appeared only this week.
The virus affected the infrastructure responsible for customer interaction and communications, the call centre, chats, the support desk, and email. For decrypting the data, the hackers demanded $10 million in cryptocurrency.
To prevent the spread of the virus across the networks, Garmin shut down all computers and the call centre. Company representatives said that customer data were not affected:
“We have not observed that any customer data, including Garmin Pay payment information, was lost or stolen. The functionality of Garmin products was not affected, except for the ability to access online services.”
On Monday, July 27, the company partially resumed Garmin Connect service. It lets smartwatch owners sync workouts with the mobile app. The company’s devices are used by pilots and mariners.
Full restoration of the affected systems, according to the company, may take several days.
According to some reports, the attack was carried out by the Evil Corp group. It is alleged by the US Department of Justice that it was founded by a 33-year-old Moscow resident, Maxim Yakubets.
In December 2019, the U.S. State Department announced a reward of $5 million for information leading to Yakubets’ capture.
The head of the “most dangerous” hacker organisation Evil Corp is suspected of organising international computer hacking attacks and banking fraud. According to law enforcement, over ten years of its existence the hackers have stolen more than $100 million from citizens and organisations in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Subscribe to ForkLog news on Telegram: ForkLog Feed — the full feed of news, ForkLog — the most important news and polls.