Tim

"did not directly make a payment to the hackers"

That leads one to think they "indirectly" made a payment to them.

Guess I'll just continue to use it this way, or use my 4-year-old iPhone (which has limited battery life).

My 3.5 year old iPhone also has a weak battery. I went into an Apple Store the other day and was going to have the battery replaced for $49. An hour later the tech said they saw some internal damage to the antenna. (That's a mystery to me.) So they replaced the phone with a new one (refurb, probably) for $49.

This thread is relevant:
https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1058676834940776450

I know of at least one government agency that has lots of integrated GPS devices in remote locations that were found susceptible to pretty much the exact same bug. Long story short, even when the original manufacturer wrote a firmware fix they were a massive pain to update not only because of their remote location, but because the government typically doesn't give employees administrative access to their computer, which they discovered was required to run the firmware update.

Does TomTom make the Subaru GPS? I doubt it.

No, they don't make the navigation app. It is Harman Kardon hardware. However TomTom's maps are used on the deice so you see their logo occasionally. (I have a 2018 Outback.)

I've had quite a few of these trips down memory lane lately. I dusted off my Dash Express and booted it up, as well as a few old Harman Kardon, LG, and HP devices.