- The Washington Times - Thursday, June 20, 2024

A pair of cyber incidents Wednesday and Thursday against software provider CDK Global forced thousands of car dealerships nationwide to put their business in neutral.

The CDK systems used by the dealerships first went down at 2 a.m. Wednesday, according to Bloomberg.

Almost 15,000 dealerships use CDK software for appointment scheduling, electronic signatures, networking services and other parts of buying and selling cars.

CDK “shut all systems down and executed extensive testing and consulted with external third-party experts,” company spokesman Tony Macrito told Bloomberg.

While the systems were restored for a time, a second attack Wednesday night has left some car dealerships still bereft of their software as of Thursday.

“We are sorry to inform you that we experienced an additional cyber incident. … We are once again proactively shutting down most of our systems. At this time, we do not have an estimated time frame for resolution, and therefore our dealers’ systems will not be available at a minimum on Thursday,” CDK told dealers, according to Automotive News.

With the software out of commission, paper and pencil are back in vogue.

“We’ll just have to do it manually. It’s not different than when a hurricane comes and we’re out of power. We’ll just have to do everything by hand, then we’ll have to re-create it. … We’re following the instructions CDK has given us to protect the integrity of our information,” Rita Case, CEO of Rick Case Automotive in Sunrise, Florida, told Automotive News.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.

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