CDK Global Ransomware: US Car Dealerships Run on Pen and Paper
On June 19, 2024, ransomware hit CDK Global's dealer management platform — the operational nervous system of ~15,000 North American dealerships — and a second strike during recovery extended the outage for weeks while finance desks, service bays and OEM ordering reverted to paper and fax. This account covers the June 19/22 double-hit timeline, the billion-dollar industry loss estimates, why DMS lock-in made fallback manual rather than competitive, and the concentration-risk docket the incident left for every regulator to cite.
