Report claims Garmin paid $10 million in ransomware attack

August 7, 2020

Land Line Staff

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Garmin reportedly paid a hacker group $10 million last month to end a ransomware attack that knocked out large segments of its corporate networks.

The Motley Fool reported this week that the company reportedly paid $10 million to a hacker group called Evil Corp to get the decryption key to unlock files on its corporate network.

A major technology company with a line of truck products that includes navigation and electronic logging devices, the Olathe, Kan.-based company announced the outage Thursday, July 23 in a message posted to its website and on its social media channels.

The outage not only affected the company’s products but also its service centers and internal and external communications. All services have since been restored.

“As a result, many of our online services were interrupted including website functions, customer support, customer-facing applications, and company communications,” the company said in a statement issued July 27 announcing services were being restored.

The statement also asserts that Garmin had no indication that any customer data was accessed, lost or stolen. The functionality of Garmin products were not affected other than the ability to connect to online services like Garmin Connect and flyGarmin.

When reached for comment by Land Line on Friday, a company spokesperson referred Land Line to the company’s July 27 statement, which makes no mention of money. The spokesperson declined to provide additional comments. The company also offers a FAQ page on its website for customers who were impacted by the outage.