27 July 2020
Avionics maker Garmin is recovering from a massive hacking attack causing many of its online services to be disrupted worldwide.
The attack happened last week and affected all of Garmin’s services including aviation, marine, running and cycling.
Among the services affected were the flyGarmin website and mobile app, Connext Services (weather, CMC, and position reports) and Garmin Pilot Apps.
A Garmin spokesperson told FLYER this afternoon (Monday), “I can confirm flyGarmin is back up and running.
“The current navigation database cycle is effective July 16, 2020 – August 13, 2020. The next navigation database cycle will be available for download on August 6. I can also confirm Garmin Pilot is back up so users can file flight plans as they did before.”
At 19:00 BST Monday 27 July, Garmin confirmed it had been the victim of a cyber attack.
“As a result, many of our online services were interrupted including website functions, customer support, customer facing applications, and company communications,’ said a company statement.
“We immediately began to assess the nature of the attack and started remediation. We have no indication that any customer data, including payment information from Garmin Pay, was accessed, lost or stolen. Additionally, the functionality of Garmin products was not affected, other than the ability to access online services.
“Affected systems are being restored and we expect to return to normal operation over the next few days. We do not expect any material impact to our operations or financial results because of this outage. As our affected systems are restored, we expect some delays as the backlog of information is being processed.
“We are grateful for our customers’ patience and understanding during this incident and look forward to continuing to provide the exceptional customer service and support that has been our hallmark and tradition.”
It’s been reported that a Russian hacker known as Evil Corp had attacked Garmin using ransomware and was demanding $10m to lift the attack. Garmin has not confirmed that.
Garmin has posted a notice on its website regarding then outage with some FAQ here. The company said today, Monday, that it was working to restore services.
We want to extend our sincerest apology for the inconvenience the outage has caused for our customers. We hope this FAQ answers some of the questions you have: https://t.co/e3lgtpZ1Ci
— Garmin (@Garmin) July 25, 2020
