Yesterday Garmin, the popular maker of GPS-enabled wearables and navigational software, was rocked by a cyberattack that caused many of its services to shut down. As of today, those services are still down, and Garmin has released little information about when they’ll be back up, leading many on Twitter to ask, “What’s taking so long?”
So Garmin, a quick 101 on communication management: communicate. Get the intern who was nothing to do right now, and interact with your users. Even if it's "sorry folks no official update on when we'll be back on the air, saw Jim order pizza for the whole IT dept"
— Eric de Ronde (@derondeeric) July 24, 2020
Here’s what we know so far:
- Garmin shut down several of its services on July 23. In a tweet that day, Garmin said, “We are currently experiencing an outage that affects Garmin Connect, and as a result, the Garmin Connect website and mobile app are down at this time.”
- A follow-up tweet also confirmed that the “outage also affects our call centers, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chats.” In addition, Garmin posted a similar message on its Connect website.
- During the ongoing shutdown of its services, many Garmin products are hindered in their abilities, specifically, in the ability to sync workouts and other activities. However, in addition to its wearable devices being sidelined, Garmin’s flyGarmin web service is also down. flyGarmin is navigational software used by some pilots. And with the software being down, and unable to update, that means some pilots cannot be in the air due to FAA rules, reports ZDNet.
- Garmin has officially only referred to the incident as an “outage.” It has not specifically said the outage was caused by a cyberattack—ransomware or otherwise. However, as ZDNet notes, some Garmin employees on Twitter have said the incident was caused by a ransomware attack, particularly, by a ransomer known as WastedLocker.
What’s not known is whether the ransomware attack, if that’s what it is, is just wreaking havoc on Garmin’s systems, or whether customer data has been compromised in the attack too. And until Garmin can verify whether that’s happened, it’s likely they will continue to remain relatively quiet.
We are currently experiencing an outage that affects Garmin Connect, and as a result, the Garmin Connect website and mobile app are down at this time. (1/2)
— Garmin (@Garmin) July 23, 2020