The group responsible for hacking the system of CDK Global has demanded tens of millions of dollars in ransom as the June 19 attack on the company’s systems continues.
CDK Global provides software to nearly 15,000 car dealerships in the United States, which they rely on for day-to-day processing. This includes stocking vehicles, ordering services or parts, and deliveries. The breach has brought activity at these auto dealers to a halt.
It’s just mass chaos at this point,” Diana Lee, the chief executive officer of auto dealership marketing agency Constellation, said. “The dealer’s required to actually run a DMS for sales, service, parts, for every single functionality — even stocking a vehicle, you can’t do it without the DMS system. So it is a disaster.”
Buying a car is still possible, but with the systems taken offline it will take longer. The dealerships that are experiencing the outage risk alienating customers that can decide to purchase from another dealer that can move faster. This is particularly bad news for dealers that use CDK, since dealers typically see an uptick in sales after Memorial Day.
CDK Global is planning to make the payment, according to Bloomberg. The group responsible is said to be based in eastern Europe.
Read more at Washingtonexaminer.com
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