By the end of July, Garmin’s online services for aviation and other markets had been restored after what the company acknowledged was a “cyber attack that encrypted some of our systems on July 23, 2020.” Although the company has not provided details at this writing, the outage was widely suspected to be a “ransomware” attack, in which hackers gain access to a networked system and encrypt its data, rendering the system unusable. In a ransomware attack, the perpetrators typically seek some kind of payment in exchange for decryption.
According to our online sister publication AVweb.com, “The data outage spread across nearly all of Garmin’s consumer markets, stopping the flow of data between Garmin devices and its cloud storage network. This included flyGarmin and its website, plus the Garmin Pilot app. That in turn shut down flight planning on Garmin’s platform, halted nav data downloads and locked out electronic logbook data.” The cyber attack reportedly disabled even Garmin’s telephone system as avionics technicians reported they were unable to contact the company’s support personnel.
