The massive car dealership outage could be cleared up by July 4th

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A cyberattack forced CDK Global to shut down software that 15,000 dealerships use for service, sales, and even to pay their workers.

By Jay Peters, a news editor who writes about technology, video games, and virtual worlds. He’s submitted several accepted emoji proposals to the Unicode Consortium.

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Car Dealers Reel From Cyberattack On $1.2 Trillion Market

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Car dealerships hamstrung by outages following two cyberattacks against CDK Global in June might finally be able to use their systems again this week, as the company says it aims to get dealers back online by July 4th.

“We are continuing our phased approach to the restoration process and are rapidly bringing dealers live on the Dealer Management System (DMS),” Lisa Finney, a CDK Global spokesperson, says in a statement to The Verge. “We anticipate all dealers connections will be live by late Wednesday, July 3 or early morning Thursday, July 4. Our Customer Care channels have also been restored and customers can call, chat, or submit eCases if they need assistance.”

CDK Global provides software for nearly 15,000 car dealerships, and following two cyberattacks on June 19th and June 20th, it proactively shut its systems down. As a result, some dealerships, which rely on CDK Global’s software for things like tracking car sales and scheduling maintenance, have had to resort to using pen and paper.

BleepingComputer reports that the BlackSuit ransomware group was behind the attacks on CDK Global, and the company has called the hack a “cyber ransom event.”

CDK Global has already brought “two small groups of dealers” and “one large publicly traded dealer group” back live on its DMS, according to a statement given to CBS MoneyWatch.

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