Garmins Lockdown

July 27, 2020

If some users were surprised that their Garmin device had not worked properly in the past few days, this could be related to a hacker attack. The Garmin website announced the failure. // Source: Garmin, screenshot Almost nothing went on for four days with Garmin's online services. Owners of fitness watches, but also of various flight instruments, could not connect them to Garmin's cloud servers to update data, plan routes, etc. According to media reports, Garmin is said to have been the victim of a hacker attack in which so-called ransomware all deposited Data encrypted and thus made illegible. Garmin is said to have paid a $ 10 million ransom for the hackers to release the code for decryption. It is still unclear whether this was really the case and whether Garmin paid. After all, most of the services are now working again, although some are still limited (see Garmin Connect Status). Soothing: The SOS and SMS functions of the Garmin Inreach Explorer tracker, which many paraglider pilots take with them for safety during flights, should not have been affected by the lockdown and should have worked all the time (see Status Inreach). Nevertheless, this case shows once again that our technical world, which we are so happy to rely on, is vulnerable.

This article has been translated for your convenience and was originally written in German.