Victim of a large-scale hijacking for a week, Garmin gave in to the blackmailers to unlock his system, by paying a ransom estimated at 10 million dollars.
Planes that can no longer update their cartography, professional athletes or seasoned amateurs deprived of activity statistics …, the WastedLocker ransomware that paralyzed the systems of the American Garmin on July 22 has harmed the image of a renowned specialist in GPS precision . Even if the time seemed long for the followers of the mark, it only took a few days for Garmin to make its system operational again, since on July 27 the services became accessible again.
A very astonishing feat whereas usually, to regain the integrity of a system, it often takes several weeks. A feat that has caught the eye of the Bleeping Computer site . The latter claims to have proof that Garmin obtained the key to decrypt his data. And for that, the company had to pay the ransom demanded by cybercriminals.
Pay or pay it
According to several American sources, the amount of the ransom amounted to 10 million dollars. For the firm, this amount is important, but undoubtedly weighs less than wasting expensive days to start from scratch and reinject backups to restore the system. Paying the ransom isn’t very glorious and only encourages criminals to pursue these very profitable scams, but it gets even worse. According to Bleeping Computer, after having decrypted its data with the encryption key , Garmin would have been content to apply additional security solutions on its servers . It is therefore possible, even probable, that cybercriminals have deposited some small dormant malware. to later carry out new attacks that will necessarily pay off for the ransomware.
Garmin is far from the only company to pay a costly ransom to quickly free its data. This is the case with many hospitals, for example. The concern is that by financially feeding cybercriminals in a substantial way, they also improve their ransomware which becomes increasingly difficult to parry.