Auto dealerships across the United States faced significant disruptions due to a cyberattack on CDK Global,a critical software provider for the automotive industry.This latest incident marked the second major disruption in as many days,affecting dealerships’sales operations,back-office functions,and service operations.

　　CDK Global informed its customers of the attack late the previous evening,prompting the company to shut down most of its systems.As a result,dealerships were unable to conduct transactions,access customer records,schedule appointments,or manage car repair orders during what would have been a busy U.S.business day.

　　With nearly 15,000 dealerships relying on CDK’s software,the impact was widespread across the automotive retail sector.AutoNation Inc.and other publicly listed dealership groups saw their shares decline sharply following the news.Dealers expressed frustration over the outage,highlighting the critical role CDK’s systems play in their daily operations.

　　Greg Thornton,general manager of a dealership group in Frederick,Maryland,which includes Audi and Volvo stores,noted the severity of the disruption,with their customer-relations software down since early Wednesday morning.He emphasized the lack of direct communication from CDK about the situation.

　　The National Automobile Dealers Association(NADA)actively sought information from CDK to assess the nature and extent of the cyber incident.CDK,originally spun off from Automatic Data Processing Inc.in 2014,was acquired by Brookfield Business Partners in April 2022 in a deal valued at$6.4 billion.

　　The outage underscored the vulnerability of automotive retailers to cyber threats and highlighted the critical need for robust cybersecurity measures in the industry’s software infrastructure.