Auto retailers and dealerships across the United States are facing another day of outages after a second cyberattack hit technology company CDK Global, which develops software used to manage auto customers and their vehicles.
In a letter from CDK sent to customers on Thursday, the company said that an additional cyberattack late Wednesday could result in an extended service outage.
“At this time, we do not have an estimated time frame to resolve the issue, so our dealer systems will be unavailable at least Thursday,” the message read.
CDK said customer support teams “remain unavailable” as a precaution to maintain security.
The company’s website says its software is running in about 15,000 dealerships.
News of the cyberattack broke early Wednesday as auto dealerships reported outages in their CDK-run dealer management systems, which allow dealers to handle customer appointments, vehicle records and other information. Many CDK customers took to social media and Reddit saying the outage forced employees to look for solutions that didn’t rely on the dropped software.
CDK did not describe the nature of the initial cyberattack, but said CDK shut down all of its systems on Wednesday. Some CDK functionality began returning Wednesday afternoon, According to Bloomberg, which first reported on the ongoing cyber attack. It is not clear whether the second cyberattack is related to the first.
It is not yet clear whether the company has the ability to determine which customer data, if any, was stolen from its systems.
CDK spokeswoman Lisa Feeney did not immediately comment when reached Thursday morning.