New York (AFP)
Many services of the American maker of smartwatches and GPS navigation systems Garmin were blocked Friday, several press articles mentioning a possible ransomware attack, which blocks data and unblocks it against payment of a ransom.
“We are currently experiencing an outage that affects Garmin.com and Garmin Connect,” read a banner posted on the home page of the group's website since Thursday morning.
"This outage is also affecting our call centers and we are currently unable to answer calls, emails or online conversations," the message continued.
"We are trying to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and apologize for the inconvenience," the company adds.
Ransomware is malicious software that blocks and encrypts data, only unlocking it against payment of a ransom.
The Garmin Pilot mobile application, used by airplane pilots to plan their flights, was also inaccessible, as was the flyGarmin service, which allows the installation of aeronautical databases.
Garmin did not specify the reasons for the outage, but according to several media, it could be a large ransomware attack ("ransomware").
According to the ZDNet site, several Garmin employees have raised this possibility on social networks, citing an estimate of the internal network and certain production systems.
The Taiwanese technological information site iThome for its part reported an internal memo sent by Garmin to its factories in Taiwan, announcing maintenance work on Friday and Saturday.
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