Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

zdnet.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 232 posts

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#201

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

kettro wrote: post #195
jacquesm wrote: post #59

The internet-of-things that aren't really your things strikes again. When will manufacturers learn that their hardware should function even if their services are down? The whole account/subscription tacked on for no apparent reason thing is highly irritating, and Garmin is actually better than most.

When I worked for Garmin, we deliberately designed products to work for as long as possible offline - the Bike Speed & Cadence Monitors (~2018) are able to work for 1 year, riding every day, then a battery change, and then another year, all before a sync to a device is required. All of the rides should be stored on-device.

What’s the significance of 365 days?

(I’ll accept “CA certificate expires” - but why isn’t there a workaround?)

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#202

Post by cowsandmilk »

kettro wrote: post #195
jacquesm wrote: post #59

The internet-of-things that aren't really your things strikes again. When will manufacturers learn that their hardware should function even if their services are down? The whole account/subscription tacked on for no apparent reason thing is highly irritating, and Garmin is actually better than most.

When I worked for Garmin, we deliberately designed products to work for as long as possible offline - the Bike Speed & Cadence Monitors (~2018) are able to work for 1 year, riding every day, then a battery change, and then another year, all before a sync to a device is required. All of the rides should be stored on-device.

Storing stuff for so long on device is great, but I still miss Garmin Training Center where I had all the graphing and mapping on my MacBook

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#203

Post by brigandish »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #105
exabrial wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has a transactional guarantee of "maybe". I would _definitely_ not rely on this functionality for anything other than non-critical or time sensitive casual navigation on roadways. When I'm out in the bush, I need my device to be up and working locally. It seems that stuff designed in SV just assumes the lifestyle of 100% connectivity is universal.

Do you have any recommendations for digital mapping solutions that “just work” without connectivity?

Forgive the potential facetiousness of my reply because I know it's not exactly what you're asking for, but if you know where you'll be then save the images somehow. Knowing how flakey Apple Maps is without connectivity, if it's important, then I'll take screenshots of the route before I leave, for the same reason I'll print out important slides of a presentation because even a lo-fi plan B is better than total failure.

Are online maps really that much better than a paper map? The only real improvement is the same as that of mp3 over carrying a walkman and bunch of tapes. There's not much beyond that, for all the hype.

Like so many things (Amp/SPA websites; social media; 24 hour rolling news…) they seem to me to not really improvements over what we had, because someone somewhere tried to lock the customer in. Maybe that's just misanthropic luddite me.

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#204

Post by mackmgg »

scruple wrote: post #118
DebtDeflation wrote: post #115

This is frustrating. I have a Garmin Fenix 6X Sapphire (that I absolutely love) and on seeing this headline I checked the Connect app on my phone and sure enough I cannot access any of my previous activities. You'd think that in this day and age of phones with 128GB+ storage that they'd be caching at least some of your historical data locally, but nope it's all in the cloud, which is currently inaccessible.

I've been tinkering with the idea of writing a service agent that detects when my Garmin GPS watch is connected to my desktop (where / how I charge it) and automatically pulls down any new activities to store locally as a backup. Starting around 2012... I used to scrape my activities off of the Garmin Connect website, I eventually got tired of the manual nature of this process and also having to keep up with changes…

It's not as automatic, but Garmin BaseCamp does let you pull your activities from the watch. I believe it has an option to transfer every time it's open and a device is plugged in, but it doesn't run in the background.

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#205

Post by nanidin »

aksss wrote: post #164
TheWindUpPirate wrote: post #21

I wonder what the root cause is? They've just tweeted that the outage is also affecting call centres and their ability to receive email. [0] I'm glad their stuff is designed with zero connectivity in mind. Just slightly irked that my history isn't cached on my phone. [0] - https://twitter.com/GarminUK/status/1286279863217926144

I struggle to imagine what non-segregated resource would be so central as to affect their customer-facing app platform, internal email (or maybe mail gateways), and call center. Maybe DNS got hosed? I mean pretty impressive ransomware if it swept across the company that far and wide, crossing so many network boundaries and resource types so quickly. Maybe accounts/control being held for ransom instead of storage encr…

When I worked there, the entire internet for the campus went down. It took down the Garmin website and everything else Garmin. The culprit? Everyone was streaming music and/or videos. Everything shared the same internet pipe and streaming music starved out essential business functions.

The next day all streaming services were blocked, and it was made clear we were being monitored for excess internet usage. Thus began the great brain drain to Apple, Amazon, and Samsung.

Well that, and the fact that they took away the nice toilet paper and replaced it with one—ply right around the same time.

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#206

Post by exabrial »

exabrial wrote: post #6

Their products are designed to work offline. Despite the cloud being down I have full local functionality right now. (Though I can't see my history, surprised they don't cache that locally). Last year when I did a 9-day canoe trip with no cell phone reception, all of my Garmin gear worked flawlessly (wearables, navigation devices, and their offline map app). Can't say the same about my friends iWatches/fitbits or eve…

I concede the point though changing settings on some of their devices should not require the cloud. I appreciate their design allows you to change stuff from their web console and apps, but the dissenters in this thread make great points with good counter examples.

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#207

Post by petre »

jschwartzi wrote: post #149
paozac wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? Last Garmin product I had was a Vivosmart HR: an internet connection and a Garmin connect account was required to change basic settings such as the display orientation. And there was no way to disable syncing.

They prompt you when you download Garmin Connect about whether you want to upload your data or not. If you choose not to upload then they'll store a local copy and let you look at some basic stats.

It's under Settings > Profile & Privacy > Data > Device upload. But it constantly shows "an error has occured now".

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#208

Post by petre »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #105
exabrial wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has a transactional guarantee of "maybe". I would _definitely_ not rely on this functionality for anything other than non-critical or time sensitive casual navigation on roadways. When I'm out in the bush, I need my device to be up and working locally. It seems that stuff designed in SV just assumes the lifestyle of 100% connectivity is universal.

Do you have any recommendations for digital mapping solutions that “just work” without connectivity?

Here Maps for vehicle nav. If you download the maps of course. OSMAnd and Windy Maps w/ on device maps for outdoor. Here is also used on Audi's satnav I think. The voice is the same and the missing roads are the same.

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#209

Post by zuppy »

jdechko wrote: post #190
zuppy wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is silly. I use the data to see where can I improve, not for bragging. I can not see it on the app while the service is down. Yeah, sure, I can manually downlod it (as I can also take a paper and a pen and write the data), but that’s not a fair expectation.

I know. I was being sarcastic. I’m the same way, and I’m pretty sure my strava is set to private. Mine was more of a comment on how everything has a social component nowadays.

ok, i’m sorry, i’ve missed the tone :)

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#210

Post by henrik242 »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #192
exabrial wrote: post #6

Their products are designed to work offline. Despite the cloud being down I have full local functionality right now. (Though I can't see my history, surprised they don't cache that locally). Last year when I did a 9-day canoe trip with no cell phone reception, all of my Garmin gear worked flawlessly (wearables, navigation devices, and their offline map app). Can't say the same about my friends iWatches/fitbits or eve…

I can't add a new device. just got a garmin index scale and it's a paperweight until they solve this.

Ouch. Index 2 is being released this autumn.
Post reply on HN