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Garrmin. Both terrible and hilarious. 1

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3DDave

3DDave

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Apparently Garmin is suffering from a cyberattack. Which means that anything they made that depends on contacting the company servers can't function correctly. Which means the smart watch fitness tracking. And also means the aircraft navigational aids.


Bad for the pilots, but funny for the fitness guys.
 
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It is a little unclear what is affected.
A GPS doesn't need a connection to a server to function.
If you are using a Garmin app to fly a flight plan that depends on an internet connection to Garmin, you may have to do a manual flight plan.
I can't see where the basic functionality of their devices is compromised.
It does look like any value added apps that communicate with Garmin are toast for the duration.

[link ]Bill[/url]
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
 
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The Garmin pilot aid needs to download the current FAA maps with all the restrictions, so instead of just going to fly, the pilot now needs to read and chart all the advisories on his path. With the loss of pilot skills, that may turn many small planes into paper weights until that is over.

For the fitness apps, they use the app to download information from the limited memory on the smart watch to the Garmin servers so the data is available to all the user's devices, and now that's gone. Then, either the user has to manually delete data to make room for new data and potentially lose the records, or find a cable for a direct connection.

The failure is that many users no longer have full access to a device because computers at Garmin got hacked.
 
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I feel vindicated. When getting my private license 12 years ago, I refused to use the trainer with GPS until I'd "mastered" (visual) navigation without it using dead reckoning and VORs.

Not that it matters. I quickly discovered that flying is a rich man's hobby, and a rich man I am not. Oh well - fun while it lasted.
 
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Reminds me of a flight in a light plane over central Queensland. The pilot asked me to get that road map out of the drawer to see if I could figure out where we are. All's well that ends well.
 
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So is this the reason an F-15 may have come too close to an Iranian passenger jet over Syria?
 
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Garmin said:
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.
Click to expand...

Yikes.
Many GPS-based systems used for navigation are dependent on having up-to-date databases. I don't know for sure off-hand, but these could be interrupted right now. There are features and functions in Garmin flight displays that would be disabled if the databases expired, and sometimes they have to be updated weekly. This is supposed to be a simple flight-plan item, not a pain in the axe.

 
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Thanks for the further explanation, Dave.

[link ]Bill[/url]
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
 
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this only effects consumer units. The main nav databases are done through a different system. They are updated every month at the end of the month activation data. They are usually installed 2 weeks before the end of the month.

To be honest I have never used one of these consumer units in a spam can. It always been a chart and watch and look out he window. But I tend to agree that the tight Scotsman skill set a lot of people will have got past extremely quickly after passing the PPL where they are forced to use it.

There is a paper notam system which can be used, there is also a few other systems which can plot the notices. In this case the garmin products won't be able to display the restriction real time in the air. To be honest commercial we don't have a real time plot we just have pages of NOTAMS paper. Most of which is utter rubbish and once you have ignored all the cranes the important stuff can be summarised on 1 sheet.
 
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Now I feel justified to have hung onto my Garmin program they don't support anymore that keeps all of my data on my own computer, rather than having to depend on their online services. Why does everyone (companies) feel like people shouldn't be able to keep their own data these days?
 
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There are plausible reasons for that, namely on the software side, since online software can be updated and EVERYONE who uses the software will be immediately and totally updated. The downside is that that the software needs to be 100.0000% reliable and available; so air-gaps are a big issue, as are intermittent connections.

Having the benefit(?) of being OLD, I remember when timeshare was pretty much the norm.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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This is a good reminder to everyone that many of the programs we buy and install on our computers as 'owned' or 'lifetime licenses' now have baked into them the requirement for the app to contact the muthership frequently or the app dies.

I have a critical crytographic program called Cypherix that I recently upgraded. I told my virus program I didn't want Cypherix lighting up my router activity-light every time I use it. It's disturbing to see your router start flailing as you go to use a cryto program! My virus checker killed that dead.

30 days later I go to run the Cypherix and it refuses to open, stating "your demo period is over"!!

Turns out that while I own the program it has to talk to the corporate server once every 30 days or it stops dead. I feel this is fraudulent and evil. Of course asking them about it resulted in them never responding again.

I directed a buddy to a 3D printing slicer: Simplify3D. I own it and like it. He went off to buy it and came back to tell me he decided not to because you have to have an internet connection to use it. Crap!!

We all need to specifically find this out before we give our money to these scummy companies.

Keith Cress
kcress -
 
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Some time back we had a thread about an owned program that was rendered unusable by an upgrade and the ethics of hacking to be able to continue to use a program that had been vandalized by the software company in an attempt to sell a newer but inferior program.
I hate most upgrades.

[link ]Bill[/url]
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
 
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In some sense, this is nothing new; it had been often mentioned that most car dealers make their money off parts and services, which is why non-OEM equipment became a thing. Even in computers, the original IBM mainframe replacement parts were so expensive that the "Seven Dwarfs" was born to compete. Interestingly, none of the seven, and later, five, dwarfs are anywhere close to even the current size of IBM.

There have always been a lot of "lockouts," i.e., methods and means to thwart competition in automobiles, including special tools, fittings, parts, etc. When ECUs became more popular, it gave people more things to hack, like ignition timing curves, partly because the low cost design approach didn't allow for expensive software design/protection, which also shows in the number of cars that have been hacked to manipulate car functionality.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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there is actually a very nice market for 386/486 RS232 port laptops/computers. I have made quite a bit of money setting them up to allow old software to use them with some disgusting old OS on them to be able to talk to some controller when the original has died.

 
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no it hasn't i hacked one 3 weeks ago. the ex soviet tractors built in chez are a piece of piss to fix. its one of the reason why its stopping me buying a new john deer orchard tractor. if you buy a germany one they are open. But if you buy outside that market they are locked tighter than a ducks arsehole.
 
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Wasn't this sort of thing (vendor lock-in or need for constant reauthorisation) one of the catalysts for the open source software movement?
I can kind of understand the point for hardware interface equipment like engine ECMs but not so much for a lot of other equipment.

EDMS Australia
 
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