Catastrophic auto dealership disruption: CDK Global reveals no restoration expected this month.
A cybersecurity incident has caused a widespread outage affecting approximately 15,000 car dealerships throughout North America since last Wednesday. In a recorded message to clients, CDK announced that they're making "substantial progress" in reactivating their main application.
However, the message clarified that they might not be able to bring all dealerships back online before June 30. The company also advised its clients to set up backup plans for their month-end financial reports.
Back in the day, CDK's software was used to manage tasks like scheduling and record-keeping for auto dealerships. The company announced on Saturday that it has started restoring the software. Yet, they've hinted several times that a solution may be within reach, only to later extend the downtime.
Some dealerships have been managing orders using pen and paper. Services such as state inspections, repairs, and delivery of parts have been halted in certain regions due to the outage.
CDK stated that they are currently evaluating the root cause of the shutdown following two cyber attacks that disrupted their systems. Although they haven't verified the identity of the attackers.
Previously, Bloomberg suggested that CDK was in talks with an Eastern European hacking group allegedly demanding a ransom, worth tens of millions, to stop the outage.
Reports from CNN by Eva Rothenberg
Read also:
Despite CDK Global's efforts to restore their main application, they uncertainly announced that not all dealerships will be operational by June 30, necessitating backup financial plans. This disruption to the business operations, affecting thousands of auto dealerships, has necessitated manual methods like using pen and paper for order management.
