CDK Global Says Dealerships Starting To Come Online After Ransomware Attack

The software maker says it will be ‘phasing in’ more car dealerships to its core dealer management system (DMS), more than a week after a ransomware attack led to a system shutdown.

CDK Global said it has brought its core dealer management system (DMS) back to a limited number of car dealerships and will be “phasing in” more dealerships and functionality soon, more than a week after a ransomware attack led to a system shutdown.

“We have successfully brought a small initial test group of dealers live on the core DMS,” CDK said in a recorded message for customers heard Thursday.

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“Once validation is completed, we will then begin phasing in other dealerships on the core DMS, accounting, parts, service, sales, [finance and insurance], user management and document management,” CDK said in the message.

Earlier this week, CDK disclosed that it expects to need at least through the weekend to recover in the wake of a pair of cyberattacks, with June 30 targeted as the earliest date for ending the outage that has disrupted thousands of car dealerships.

Austin, Texas-based CDK, a provider of software used by 15,000 dealerships, shut down most of its systems after the cyberattacks struck on June 18 and 19. CDK provides SaaS-based CRM, payroll, finance and other key functions for dealerships.

In the recorded message heard Thursday, CDK noted that “there are some integration points with OEM systems and third-party partners that may not be live immediately but will be phased out as quickly as possible.” The company said it’s “also actively working on bringing other applications live” such as CRM.

CDK has declined to comment on media reports indicating that the company was planning to make a ransom payment, purportedly worth tens of millions of dollars, with the goal of recovering its systems more quickly.

While CDK was working to recover from the first attack last week, the company was struck by a second attack late Wednesday evening last week, according to CDK.

“Late in the evening of June 19, we experienced an additional cyber incident and proactively shut down most of our systems,” CDK said in a statement provided to CRN last week.

The system shutdown resulted in an outage that has severely affected thousands of car dealerships.