Media: Garmin pays multi-million-dollar ransom to decrypt files

Garmin, the smartwatch maker with navigation, paid a ransom to resume operation of its services. Sky News reports this.

According to sources, the company handed over the ransom through the third-party firm Arete IR, which handles such situations. After receiving the transfer, the hackers provided Garmin with a decryption key to recover the files.

It is not known whether the hackers received the full sum of $10 million in cryptocurrency. Representatives of Garmin and Arete IR did not deny or confirm that a ransom was paid.

Earlier, on July 23, Garmin was attacked by the WastedLocker ransomware, which affected the infrastructure responsible for client interactions, the call centre, chats, the customer-support service and email.

Journalists speculated that Garmin did not make the payment directly due to possible involvement by the Russian group Evil Corp, which is under US sanctions, in creating the virus.

However, Arete IR insisted that the WastedLocker virus is not linked to Evil Corp.

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