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Following a massive cyberattack that forced CDK Global to take down its systems, affecting the more than 15,000 car dealerships in the US that use the SaaS company’s software offerings, it has issued a warning to users stating that threat actors are now calling customers impersonating CDK agents or affiliates to gain system access.
The company was first attacked on Tuesday, July 18, forcing it to take down most of its online infrastructure as a preventive measure to prevent the attack from spreading to its customers. This was followed by a second attack the following day as the company brought its systems back online. CDK had to shut down its systems again after it suffered a second data breach and brought in third-party experts to help assess the overall impact of the attacks and bring services back as soon as possible.
Now, the company has warned potential customers against bogus calls from the threat actors behind the attack, impersonating CDK agents of affiliates to gain access to its customers’ systems. As yet another precautionary measure, CDK has shut down its customer care channels and has set interactive voice response (IVR) toll-free lines at +1 (855) 356-3270 and +1 (877) 483-7817 in English and French, respectively, to provide customers with status updates.
BleepingComputer reports that the toll lines play a prerecorded message stating that the company is aware that “bad actors are contacting our customers posing as members or affiliates of CDK trying to obtain system access.” The message further adds that CKD associates are not contacting customers to access their environments and systems. Finally, the message asks callers to “only respond to non-CDK employees and communications.”
Following the second attack, CDK stated that it aims to restore services by Friday, June 21. However, the company has since revoked this deadline, claiming that there’s no known estimated time frame for resolution and hence its customers’ systems will remain offline, likely for several days.
As mentioned before, CDK is a rather popular car dealership management software vendor used by over 15,000 car dealerships in the US to manage everything from financing, payroll management, support and service, and inventory to other back-office operations.
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