Garmin reportedly hit by ransomware

Fitness sites down, WastedLocker ransomware suspected

Navigation and fitness wearables firm Garmin has been hit by an outage that is currently affecting some of its websites including Garmin Connect, the platform for users of Garmin's health and fitness trackers such as smartwatches and heart rate monitors.

"We are currently experiencing an outage that affects Garmin.com and Garmin Connect. This outage also affects our call centers, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chats. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and apologize for this inconvenience," the company says on its website.

In a tweet Garmin said its call centres had also been affected.

Although the company has not yet given a reason for the outages, some Garmin employees have said on social media the firm has been hit by a ransomware attack, with at least one ascribing it to the WastedLocker strain (the original post on Reddit has since been deleted).

WastedLocker emerged in April 2020 and has been used to attack large corporations by the Evil Corp cyber crime group, which is also associated with Dridex and BitPaymer malware and believed to originate in Russia. Attacks are generally highly targeted, and Evil Corp has tended to focus on US corporations, demanding ransoms that are generally in the millions of dollars. In general, the group has been more interested in extracting ransoms rather than stealing data. The group is also thought to have links with the operators of Magecart malware which steals payment credentials from ecommerce sites.

In November, oil giant Pemex fell victim to a $5m ransomware attack linked to Evil Corp.