Ransomware Attack Affects Parts & Service Network for 15,000 Auto Dealerships

[AutoMechanic]

Seems like a good time to work on the Beetle
Just a theory

I would if I could go home lol. They have already stated we aren’t going to close which I think is ridiculous lol.

 

[bdcardinal]

I guess all of the eLeads that Ford uses for new car sales runs through CDK so our sales guys are twitting their thumbs.

Thankfully most people have a good sense of humor about this because there is literally nothing we can do about it. I just feel bad because like me, most of those parts people are paid on commission so they are not getting paid.

 

[slo town]

These attacks on American businesses should be treated no differently than armed robbery, or terrorist activity resulting in full blown reaction at the highest levels. Including military response.

Putting 15K businesses in peril effecting hundreds of thousands of people is basically an act of war.

That problem is, whose head do you blow off? Cyberattacks are cloaked in secrecy. We think they originate in the usual suspect countries, but what are you going to do, bomb St. Petersburg or Beijing? Even now in times of actual ground fighting wars, you have enemy soldiers dressed up as civilians. It's complicated.

Scott

 

[Pew]

You snooze, you lose.
Is it fair to say their IT dept was snoozing?

CDK is still down this morning. My desktop shortcut won't even launch the login window. Everything is shut down.

IT can only prevent and stop so many attacks. In almost all cases the user is the biggest risk; people plugging in infected USB drives, opening up infected emails, clicking on things they're not supposed too, etc.

Some bigger companies might use a dedicated security operations center by a managed IT company but those are expensive.

I would presume the sales pitch to the dealers was outsource to us and do away with your IT department?

Most small firms under 50 people don't have a dedicated IT department and outsource to IT consultants so we were their consultants.

 

[OVERKILL]

From the network side, I know all too well why this stuff can happen. While not the case here (I've dealt with CDK), in migrating a dealership from one DMS to another I was asked by their network team to just port forward some ports. Blindly. I of course refused, said give me a list of the IP's that need to access those ports and I will grant them access. I also asked why they couldn't use a VPN and apparently it was because the other half of the software that wasn't on-prem is hosted in different AWS instances and isn't configured to have VPN links with the sites.

It took them two weeks to get me the IP addresses. It later broke, about a year later, with certain functions not working because they moved some services to a different AWS instance on a new subnet and didn't let me know.

Many times convenience overrides security and this is a recipe for disaster.

 

[SC Maintenance]

I would if I could go home lol. They have already stated we aren’t going to close which I think is ridiculous lol.

So are you just sitting on your hands?

This is really sad. Its going to hurt a lot of small businesses, and there employees. That productivity is lost forever.

 

[AutoMechanic]

So are you just sitting on your hands?

This is really sad. Its going to hurt a lot of small businesses, and there employees. That productivity is lost forever.

Yep we are just chilling basically. We are the only ones open so I am assuming most people think we are closed.

 

[Dave Hess]

My career was in Semiconductor Mfg Equipment; the capital equipment that TSMC, Intel, Samsung, etc use to produce chips from wafers.
A single fab costs billions to bring up. We were held contractually to be up and given we were in CA (earthquakes and fires) we had to demonstrate our fail over capabilities for our critical software business applications. That meant parts of SAP (spare parts mainly, but some production as well) and my custom corporate forecast and statistical analytics application (deemed mission critical).

They would kill power to the computer room building and fail over to backup power, which had a big diesel generator. We had 45 minutes to bring up the identified software apps. Guess which one passed muster? It wasn't the mega million SAP beast. My apps took minutes as I failed over to a redundant SQL Server in Oregon based on a simple script that ran automatically. My design worked; SAP was a big fat expensive failure. And when HQ was restored, my script rolled all the transactions back to the master dB in San Jose.

I bet your boss and colleagues were very impressed with your work….

 

[Dave Hess]

Ascension Healthcare across the country was attacked recently.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/29/tech/ransomware-attacks-hospitals-patients-danger/index.html

 

[RazorsEdge]

I'll bet it's DJI's fault for all of this

They're getting the blame game currently,which is beyond ridiculous.

 

[John105]

I have noticed from folks posting invoices they all look the same - so same software? Its likely all in the cloud.

Only article I could find is behind a paywall - cox automotive if anyone subscribes.

There was a time when all online auto parts for OE looked identical, I think it was called trade motion. It was more easily identified when web pages were less slick. But I still notice almost all Toyota, all GM, etc parts catalogs are identical to include missing parts and typos…

 

[bdcardinal]

The latest from CDK!
“At this time, we do not have an estimated time frame for resolution and therefore our dealers’ systems will not be available likely for several days,”

 

[SC Maintenance]

The latest from CDK!
“At this time, we do not have an estimated time frame for resolution and therefore our dealers’ systems will not be available likely for several days,”

Thank you for your continued posts. There very informative.

 

[bdcardinal]

Thank you for your continued posts. There very informative.

And I'm not even on CDK, we use DealerTrack and it has been painfully slow today. Like I type in a part number and wait 10-15 seconds for it to pop up on the invoice/RO.

 

[JeffKeryk]

I bet your boss and colleagues were very impressed with your work….

It's all about choosing the right tools for the job, and understanding how to use them. Microsoft SQL Server has different levels of redundancy you can build (and pay for). Today it is even better. SQL Azure is freakin' incredible.

Beating SAP, Oracle and such is easy because they are soooo big and are generally old architecture. I have the ability to be nimble using the most modern tech. I had to laugh at the SAP team's excuses, but felt sorry for them because "SAP is a beast and you have to feed the beast."

My application was named "Fort Knox" by the C-Level, "Because that's where the gold is." I was lucky to have the opportunity.

 

[DuckRyder]

Hmm . wonder if this is why i never got a confirmation e-mail form lakeland ford?

 

[bdcardinal]

Hmm . wonder if this is why i never got a confirmation e-mail form lakeland ford?

If they use CDK, absolutely. With that system down they cannot check inventory to make sure the parts is not only there, but where it is in the facility. Also they can't invoice with CDK down.

 

[SammyChevelleTypeS3]

My career was in Semiconductor Mfg Equipment; the capital equipment that TSMC, Intel, Samsung, etc use to produce chips from wafers.
A single fab costs billions to bring up. We were held contractually to be up and given we were in CA (earthquakes and fires) we had to demonstrate our fail over capabilities for our critical software business applications. That meant parts of SAP (spare parts mainly, but some production as well) and my custom corporate forecast and statistical analytics application (deemed mission critical).

They would kill power to the computer room building and fail over to backup power, which had a big diesel generator. We had 45 minutes to bring up the identified software apps. Guess which one passed muster? It wasn't the mega million SAP beast. My apps took minutes as I failed over to a redundant SQL Server in Oregon based on a simple script that ran automatically. My design worked; SAP was a big fat expensive failure. And when HQ was restored, my script rolled all the transactions back to the master dB in San Jose.

When I was introduced to SAP around 2006 and told it would replace the systems I depended on for over 10 years of pretty much trouble free use, I told my bosses it was like going back to the cave man days compared to what we already had. I was asked to evaluate SAP yet of course was told "we are all going to SAP regardless due to corporate changes across all industries!" I was very happy to retire after it was put on line parallel to what we had for my last 2 years. I was told SAP hired many retired managers to convince their former companies of SAPs superiority. I guess SAP was great for places with very minimal computer needs at the time so they could not see what it lacked.

 

[AZjeff]

Just ones that use CDK.

Which is apparently the vast majority. Was told GM supplies the software to the dealers so in reality GM is letting the dealers down. My friend would have delivered 4 cars today. The sales money will be recovered, the lost service money won’t.

Part of my work was developing new armor systems for military ground vehicles. The specs for the threat to be defeated were always behind the bad guys because there was no way to guess what they’d come up with. Can imagine it’s the same with this, the hack has to be used to identify it and develop protection?

 

[JeffKeryk]

When I was introduced to SAP around 2006 and told it would replace the systems I depended on for over 10 years of pretty much trouble free use, I told my bosses it was like going back to the cave man days compared to what we already had. I was asked to evaluate SAP yet of course was told "we are all going to SAP regardless due to corporate changes across all industries!" I was very happy to retire after it was put on line parallel to what we had for my last 2 years. I was told SAP hired many retired managers to convince their former companies of SAPs superiority. I guess SAP was great for places with very minimal computer needs at the time so they could not see what it lacked.

The SAP sales team makes their applications seem like the best thing in the world. What a pack of lies. I was one of the leaders on the 2 year implementation, 1st as the project lead until we hired someone with numerous implementations experience, then ABAP and BW lead. SAP expertise, programming, etc. pays very well. I am so happy to say much of my SAP responsibilities ended after implementation. Miserable work.