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Blog Editor’s Note: Bad break for Garmin, our best wishes for a quick recovery. In total, these kinds of things can be far more damaging than “traditional” crimes. Also they transcend all borders. Federal administrations should take an active role in both preventing these kinds of events and pursing and punishing the perpetrators. Any dollar spent in such an effort will certainly provide a greater return than focusing on crime that can be adequately addressed by states or localities.
For the PNT community, this is also a reminder that (1) interference with signals is not the only thing we have to worry about, and (2) relying on one source of PNT is a bad idea for any number of reasons.
Garmin hit by massive ransomware attack
Garmin fitness devices have been disconnected for nearly a day after the company suffered a major outage, reports the Verge.
The outage may be caused by a ransomware attack. The outage was first reported by Garmin July 23. It affects Garmin wearables, apps and call centers, which has made customer support impossible.
The message on the Garmin Connect website reads, “We’re sorry. We are currently experiencing an outage that affects Garmin.com and Garmin Connect. This outage also affects our call centers, 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 apologize for this inconvenience.”
Garmin Connect allows customers to obsessively track their exercise performance and fitness goals. FlyGarmin, the navigation service that supports Garmin’s aviation devices, has also been down affecting some pilots, reports ZDNET.
