The US company specializing in GPS navigation systems was attacked Thursday by hackers who demand a ransom.
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Data from Garmin watch users was held hostage for nearly a week.
Garmin
Stories of kidnappings and ransoms have always captivated some and frightened others. The most famous is undoubtedly that of the baby Lindbergh in 1932. But 88 years later, the bandits no longer attack infants and now send computer viruses capable of taking renowned companies hostage. Last Thursday, the company Garmin, specializing in GPS navigation systems, was the victim of hackers. Since then, the Garmin Connect app can no longer update the data of runners, cyclists, swimmers and other sportsmen connected to their watch.
“Since its founding in 1989, more than 200 million products have been sold by the company headquartered in Schaffhausen”
It’s not going to turn the world upside down, you might say. Certainly not. Except that Garmin also equips aviators and navigators, who could be much more affected than the amateurs of ground sport. Though. The data collected by the American company is more sensitive than it appears. In addition to GPS data, these watches capture temperature, heartbeat, movement, altitude, weight, calories burned, hours of sleep. In short, data that could be of interest to companies related to health such as insurance. Especially since Garmin (whose name is the contraction of its two inventors, Gary Burrell and Min H. Kao) sells millions of watches each year. Since it was founded in 1989, more than 200 million products have been sold by the company, which is headquartered in Schaffhausen. A multinational that employs 13,000 people around the world.
Privacy scrutinized?
Coming back to data disclosure, the leading French-language watch comparison blog Nakan.ch is sounding the alarm. “Are you in good health? Do you have a healthy lifestyle? Do you have habits, a daily routine? Where do you live? What time do you come home at night? When was the last time you had sex? asks the specialist. If you wear your connected watch, which constantly analyzes your heart rate, oxygen saturation, activity level, GPS position and environmental information (altitude, temperature, barometric pressure for example), it is possible to perform analyzes. that answer these questions. ”
Ten million required
So who benefits from the crime? A group of Russian hackers are said to be behind the ransom demand and demand $ 10 million in exchange for unlocking the WastedLocker software, developed by a group of cybercriminals by the name of Evil Corp. According to the site futura-sciences.com, the malware infects computers and encrypts data on the hard drive. The victim can then no longer access the files without a password. He only has two solutions left. Either it pays the ransom amount or it reboots from a backup. What Garmin seems to be doing for almost a week.
For now, the American firm still displays the same message on the front page of its website. “We are currently experiencing a failure that affects garmin.com and Garmin Connect. This failure also affects our call centers and we are unable to receive any call, e-mail or online chat. We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and we apologize for the inconvenience. ”
Gradual return to normal
May those who fear losing their data be reassured. The collected activity and health statistics are stored in the device and will be accessible as soon as the maintenance service has repaired the system. Tuesday evening, part of the functions of Garmin Connect had been repaired.
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