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Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

zdnet.com

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Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#211

Post by petre »

jschwartzi wrote: post #151
makomk wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I tried, Google maps wouldn't do any kind of offline routing for walking or cycling, amongst other annoying limitations.

That's because Google requires their servers to offload their patented Most Dangerous Path algorithm for cycling directions.

The Graphhopper routing service is great for cycling. It even has different bike profiles, walking and hiking. The bike profile is essentially a touring bike and the algo is tuned to avoid slopes. Road bike sticks to the road, MTB uses backroads and footpaths. Hiking prefers more scenic route even if they're longer.

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#212

Post by iamacyborg »

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.

Don't worry, even if you could add the scale to your profile the scale doesn't currently work.

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#213

Post by iamacyborg »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #201
kettro wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

Presumably related to the size of the on-device storage?

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#214

Post by ultrarunner »

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.

Based on my experience with their invented proprietary "language" based on Java (with a busted barely-working toolchain) I'm not confident that a lot of thought has gone into doing things sustainably. It has the feeling of being held together with tape and bubblegum wrappers; that the native device and SDKs are a burden to be overcome rather than an empowering interface. I wasn't surprised that they went down during Jim Walmsley's solo Hardrock 100 FKT. I am shocked (but not exactly surprised) that they are still down 24 hours later. I loved the idea of ConnectIQ, and really really wanted them to succeed, but the crippled $500 watch on my wrist will almost certainly be replaced by another brand when its time comes.

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#215

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#216

Post by ObsoleteNerd »

fbnlsr wrote: post #52
mattmaroon wrote: post #36

I guess I always assumed Garmin made most of their money on their aviation products, since they are so dominant and so expensive. And those are designed to rarely if ever connect to the internet. But I guess I was pretty off on that, they’re only 20%. On a side note the graphs of their revenues per year and by category show a company that successfully branched out when their former big category, automotive, which was…

I used to sell Garmin car GPS back when I worked in a retail shop. They were really good devices. But yeah I'm with you I thought most of their money came from aviation (it seems like everyone uses Garmin products), but their sports watches sell like crazy. Actually, I realized their network was down because this morning my watch would not sync after a run. :)

I've found even the absolute cheapest Garmin car GPS to be better than other brands 3x the price. I got some clearance-bin obsolete-model $99 Garmin GPS for my camping/roadtrip beater car and it's infinitely better than most the others I tried that were 3-4x the price (returned 2 other more expensive ones before giving up and buying the cheap Garmin).

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#217

Post by usrusr »

TwoBit wrote: post #184
francisofascii wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Total speculation, my guess is WastedLocker. It has been hitting all types of companies in the past few months. Have a friend who's company was hit recently. They were somehow were able to encrypt the backups.

Looks like their backups were mishandled. Any listing of best practices for backups includes their being stored offline.

And the list of best practices for ransomware attackers includes keeping a low profile for a an undisclosed timespan before sending demands so that the victim does not know how far back the last clean backup would be. Backups are an important tool when solving the attack, but they are not the solution.

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#218

Post by szszrk »

petee wrote: post #102
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…

Garmin Connect app won't even show you data sync'd from a watch unless its online and connected. Simple things like hours slept, or miles walked will not show. Right now it just has a "server maintenance" message, and won't show anything that uses a graph, or historical data...nothing is stored locally. On my recent hiking trip, the watch had no problem recording and sync'ing tracks, but the connect app refused to re…

I can see current stats in app... steps, weakly activity and so on. Sync doesn't work properly, but high level stats are there.

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#219

Post by usrusr »

alfalfasprout wrote: post #199
mns wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird that everything Garmin related is down. I wonder if they got hacked or something similar and just took everything offline. Their response is also weird, seems like internal infrastructure is also down. "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. This outage also affects our call centers, and we are c…

I’m guessing they pulled “the plug” on everything once they saw the ransomware was spreading.

Probably after losing a few rounds of whack-a-mole with partial shutdowns.

Might even be a better customer experience, a few days of a clear "Garmin is down, do everything with cables like they did back in 2010" is much less frustrating to deal with than all the services being in some form of flaky brownout state where nothing ever works reliably and you keep trying and failing.

Re: Garmin services and production go down after ransomware attack

#220

Post by helsinkiandrew »

Does anybody have any understanding of either the WastedLocker ransom ware or Garmin's internal systems that can explain how it can have such a massive affect on its website, production backends (including airplane navigational systems), call centre, and possibly manufacturing systems. Is this windows everywhere? or badly partitioned systems or have they pulled the plug on everything just to be sure
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