Car dealers are facing fraud attempts after a crash caused by a cyberattack

TORONTO – An auto industry group on Monday warned dealers to be wary of fraudsters as outages continue to occur following last week’s cyberattacks.

The warning came after CDK Global, an Illinois-based company that provides software to several auto dealers in Canada and the U.S., was hit Wednesday by multiple cyberattacks that led to widespread outages.

Canadian Automobile Dealers Association president Tim Reuss said within 24 hours of last week’s outage, members flagged fraudsters’ attempts to steal login credentials by impersonating company representatives.

“When this was happening,” Reuss said of the cyberattacks, “there were other scammers who were talking to dealers, posing as representatives of CDK, and saying, ‘Hey, I’m here to help.’”

He said the fraud attempts added insult to injury.

“Not only was the supplier hit, but other bad actors tried to take advantage of the whole situation,” Reuss said in an interview.

CDK advised its customers to be wary of “bad actors” posing as members or affiliates of CDK attempting to gain access to the system by contacting customers. He urged them to be cautious of any phishing attempts.

The showroom management system, which helps conduct daily operations such as transactions and service visits, remains the backbone of the business, Reuss said.

Dealerships remained open, but employees began recording information with pen and paper rather than using a computer system.

Gerald Wood, president of the Alberta Automotive Dealers Association, said dealers have found creative ways to do business.

“It’s a lot of digging out old forms and handwriting,” he said. “It’s kind of back to basics.”

Many dealers issue sales receipts for their customers, which requires extreme care for accuracy at all dealerships.

“Whenever you move from an electronic system to a manual system, there is always a concern that accuracy will start to drop a little bit,” Wood said.

The automotive companies affected by the outage include Ford, Stellantis and BMW. Stellantis Canada said in an email that dealers are resorting to manual processes as CDK continues to resolve the issue.

CDK says it will take at least a few days to restore the system.

Reuss said that once the system is restored, there will be a “hangover” among dealers as they recover from the disruption.

“This should take a few weeks, during which the dealer will have to re-enter everything and reconcile with the system,” he said. – Make sure everything is OK again.

However, it said there was still no critical information about the data breaches.

“We are also waiting for additional information and transparency from CDK,” he said. “Was any customer data unencrypted impacted at any point?”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 24, 2024.

Canadian Press