A car hauler passes a Chevrolet dealership on June 20, 2024, in Chicago. A cyberattack on CDK Global, a software provider that helps dealerships manage sales and service, has crippled the workflow at approximately 15,000 dealerships across the U.S. and Canada. While most Chicagoans were busy enjoying the start of summer, a high-stakes hostage drama played out at a company with deep roots in suburban Hoffman Estates — and in car dealerships from coast to coast.
In the meantime, car dealers have had to scramble, resorting to paper and pen to record vehicle orders by hand and relying on workarounds for everything from insurance and financing to service and repairs. The disruption resulted in long delays and lost orders. It will leave behind a monumental recordkeeping mess, and there’s no telling when all the lingering issues will be fully resolved.
Every one of these attacks is an outrage, disrupting commerce, threatening the prospects of otherwise healthy organizations and requiring lavish investments to harden systems against hacking. It’s unconscionable that important players in the global economy are being held hostage and forced to choose between saving their businesses and paying off thieves.
Their 26-count indictment accuses Dmitry Khoroshev, a 31-year-old from the Russian city of Voronezh, of developing the software that he and other hackers then used in extortion attempts against schools and hospitals, as well as deep-pocketed companies. Authorities revealed, for instance, that they had developed encryption keys that could be used to defuse any future attacks based on LockBit ransomware without any ransom being paid. They also had seized the servers used by LockBit administrators and their publicly facing websites, disrupting the gang’s ability to launch new cyberattacks or follow through on threats to publish sensitive data that it hijacked.