Did Garmin Pay Hackers After Back to Normal Claim?

Garmin the maker of fitness watches claim that no customer data was compromised after a hack attack which shut down access to Garmin apps, a gang of Russian hackers are believed to be behind the attack, what’s not known is whether they paid a ransom demand.

During the past few days, the US Federal Bureau Of Investigation (FBI) has been working with Garmin to identify the hackers.

Last night the Company issued a statement claiming that “We immediately began to assess the nature of the attack and started remediation. Affected systems are being restored and we expect to return to normal operation over the next few days.”

ChannelNews inquiries to Garmin were ignored.

The Company added Garmin does not expect “any material impact to our operations or financial results because of this outage,” the company said.

Investigators believe that a gang of Russian hackers were responsible for crippling the smartwatch maker’s Garmin Connect service last week with malicious software tied to Evil Corp., a Moscow-based hacker group run by alleged cybercriminal Maksim Yakubets.

Evil Corp. runs the WastedLocker ransomware responsible for the Garmin outage, which encrypts the target’s files and demands a ransom to unlock them.

Tech Crunch claimed that the hackers have sought as much as $10 million to release affected data, though companies can get around such an attack if they’ve backed up the files, according to the outlet.

At this stage it’s not known whether Garmin payed the money.

Evil Corp is known to Australian cyber security experts as they are believed to have attempted to attack Australian banks and financial institutions.

To date it’s believed that the gang has collected over $100 million with its “Dridex” malware.

Yakubets was working for Russia’s Federal Security Service as of 2017 and sought a license the following year to work with Russian classified information from the intelligence agency, officials said in December. The US State Department has offered a $5 million reward for information leading to his capture.

About Post Author

David Richards

David Richards has been writing about technology for more than 30 years. A former Fleet Street journalist, he wrote the Award Winning Series on the Federated Ships Painters + Dockers Union for the Bulletin that led to a Royal Commission. He is also a Logie Winner for Outstanding Contribution To TV Journalism with a story called The Werribee Affair. In 1997, he built the largest Australian technology media company and prior to that the third largest PR company that became the foundation company for Ogilvy PR. Today he writes about technology and the impact on both business and consumers.