Garmin’s smartwatch and electronics company’s computer networks were back online Monday, the company said, after an outage that was widely believed to have been due to a ransomware attack.
The business has admitted that it was the target of a “cyber attack that encrypted some of our devices,” without giving details.
The comments suggest a ransomware attack that would allow a payment to the hackers to receive a decryption key.
“We are pleased to report that many of the systems and services affected by the recent outage are returning to work, including Garmin Connect,” Garmin said in an online post.
“These features still have temporary limitations while all the data are processed.”
According to the Kansas-based firm, the July 23 attack interrupted Garmin ‘s website; client communications, and customer-facing services.
There was no suggestion that customer data had been compromised or that Garmin products affected functionality, the company said.
“While our affected systems are being restored we foresee some delays as the information backlog is being processed,” said Garmin.
While Garmin Connect was not available during the outage, the activity and health and wellness data collected from Garmin devices during the outage was stored on the system and will appear in Garmin Connect as soon as the user synchronizes their device according to the firm.
Garmin Connect is a fitness and health care app.
Although Garmin has yet to explain the nature of the outage, analysts have speculated that the company fell victim to a so-called ransomware attack, in which hackers block a victim’s access to their own data without paying a ransom.
According to the company, the Garmin Pilot program, which was used by pilots to schedule flights, was fully functional on Monday, as was the flyGarmin air database service.
The outage impacted Garmin’s call centers, meaning the company could not respond to phone calls , emails or online chats from customers.
Some media linked the malware to a group of Russian cybercriminals known as Evil Corp.
