Garmin Security Incident

Mitnick Security | 07.31.2020 | 4 MIN READ TIME Last week, Garmin users experienced an outage in service as the result of a malicious cyber attack. Lets review the incident, looking at what the hackers did and how Garmin handled the situation to glean valuable lessons from the incident. What Happened? Late Wednesday July 22 into early Thursday July 23, the sport and fitness technology brand Garmin fell victim to a disruptive ransomware virus. The virus, referred to as WastedLocker, is believed to be developed by a Russian hacker group called Evil Corp and an elite form of ransomware that encrypts the files of those affected, making them inaccessible and extremely hard to recover. After Evil Corp breached Garmins corporate networks, they seized control of all the files on the system and demanded to be paid a ransom of $10 million to decrypt the compromised data. As a result of the attack, Garmin experienced an outage of its website and Garmin Connect, locking Garmin customers out of most functionality with the online brand and its application. Customers were unable to log their fitness sessions or access their health data on their smartwatches or phones, pilots were unable to download flight plans to navigate their aircrafts per FAA requirements, and Garmins communications systems were offline, affecting customers with questions about the sudden connectivity issues. Instead of clearly communicating that the trouble was the result of a cyber attack, Garmin issued the following statement, per TechCrunch : It wasnt until days later that Garmin announced it was "the victim of a cyber-attack that encrypted some of our systems," according to the BBC . As of the publication of this article, Garmin is now in the recovery process, providing limited access to its tools. The fitness provider has still made no public statement indicating that it was a ransomware attack, nor if they paid the amount demanded to get access to their systems. What this Means for Garmin Customers...

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