If you’re stumped by the latest Garmin outage, here’s what you can do
There’s nothing worse than grabbing a personal best in a run and then finding out you can’t brag about it to the world. OK, there are plenty of things worse – and actually, that kind of behavior probably isn’t healthy – but for those of us in denial, the recent Garmin outage is something that’s causing a lot of consternation. Since July 23, the fitness brand has been suffering from a lack of connectivity, which was originally down to ‘maintenance’. This meant that anyone trying to upload a run, swim, cycle, yoga session or any kind of fitness workout to the Garmin Connect service was unable to do so. So far, Garmin has yet to explain what’s actually happening, just saying the following in a Tweet: However, while maintenance is often scheduled for quiet hours to allow the company to update key services, an outage of this length is almost certainly something much more in-depth – and a report from ZDNet is stating that « several Garmin employees took to social media to share details about the attack, all calling it a ransomware attack ». Garmin has yet to confirm the cause of the outage, merely putting the same statement from its Twitter account on its platforms, and the app saying « Sorry, we’re down for maintenance. Check back shortly. » The same report from ZDNet cites a report from Taiwanese technology site iThome, which is claiming that a memo has been sent to Garmin’s Taiwanese production facilities. This memo says that ‘servers and databases’ were attacked, and that production lines were being shut down for two days for maintenance. The ZDNet’s report is stating the software used by pilots, flyGarmin, for their Garmin navigational systems has experienced an outage and is reportedly grounding some planes – the statement on flyGarmin’s status page says: « We are currently experiencing an outage that affects flyGarmin and as a result, the flyGarmin website and mobile app are down at this time.
