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Smartwatch maker Garmin has become the latest apparent victim of cybercriminals, with a suspected attack taking offline its website, mobile app and customer service call centres.
On Twitter, the company confirmed it was "experiencing an outage that affects Garmin Connect, and as a result, the Garmin Connect website and mobile app are down at this time".
Garmin Connect is the service used by owners of the company's smartwatches to track their running performance and other health and fitness goals.
Garmin has said an investigation is ongoing and the cause of the outage has not yet been confirmed. It is not clear whether any customer information has been affected.
However, the Taiwanese technology site iThome reported Garmin had been hit by a ransomware virus.
iThome published an internal memo Garmin sent to its departments in Taiwan, warning that its databases and servers had been impacted as a result of a suspected hack, and that its production lines were being suspended.
Ransomware, which is a virus tailored to encrypt its victims' computers and demand a ransom to open them again, has become less popular since it impacted the NHS in 2017.
A ransomware attack may be mistaken for an incident of cyber extortion, which is an increasingly popular method criminals use to monetise hacking into somebody else's network.
These so-called "name and shame" criminals will encrypt a victim's computers after they have already broken into the network and stolen data.
The targeted companies are then named on the criminals' websites, and the files are usually leaked piecemeal in order to extort the victim.
The impact of the outage on Garmin has been significant, with the company adding: "This outage also affects our call centres, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chats.
"We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and apologise for this inconvenience."
(CGTN)
