Olathe’s Garmin suffers massive technology outage in a suspected ransomware attack
Garmin International continues to struggle with a major technological outage that appears to have swept across divisions of the Olathe-based company.
Garmin on Thursday notified customers on social media of a widespread outage affecting Garmin Connect. That’s the software that tracks customer health and fitness data and connects with smart watches and other Garmin devices.
“This outage also affects our call centers, and we are currently unable to receive any calls, emails or online chats,” Garmin wrote. “We are working to resolve this issue as quickly as possible and apologize for this inconvenience.”
But the problem has persisted through the day Friday. Garmin officials could not be reached for comment.
ZDnet, a business technology news site, which first reported the outage, said employees attributed the problem to a ransomware attack on social media. Ransomware attacks user files, encrypts them and essentially holds the information hostage for a payment.
While cybercriminals previously targeted individual consumers with ransomware, most now go after bigger targets like hospitals, schools, and municipalities, according to Consumer Reports.
In addition to fitness devices, the outage has affected Garmin’s aviation technology. The Garmin Pilot App, which allows general aviation pilots to plan flights, navigate in the air and file flight plans, is also experiencing problems, the company said.
AVweb reported on Friday that the Pilot App can still be used in flight. The aviation publication said users would likely experience “degraded performance” in flight planning and some problems with some databases as the company worked on fixing the issue.
An internal memo said to be from Garmin’s IT staff in Taiwan was published by iThome. It said Taiwanese factories would be closed for two days as Garmin deals with the problem.
This story was originally published July 24, 2020 at 3:36 PM.
