Cyberattack impacting car dealerships has experts worried

The worry now shifts toward what information, if any, were the hackers able to collect.

OKLAHOMA CITY — A cyberattack brought 15,000+ car dealerships across the country to a near standstill.

The attack has caused a lot of problems for anyone who needs work done. As systems come back online, could it cause even more headaches?

One expert thinks so. We are told CDK Global has reclaimed control of about 60% of their systems and it shouldn't be much longer until they get everything back.

However, the worry now shifts toward what information, if any, were the hackers able to collect.

"Many dealers throughout the United States, 15,000 of them or so to be exact, according to CDK, were impacted by this as they use the software platform," said Cliff Steinhauer, Director of Information Security and Engagement at The National Cybersecurity Alliance.

The cyberattack has affected dealerships across the country, and possibly thousands of its customers.

"It has a huge impact on on their customers, on the dealerships themselves, and also has an impact on third parties, you know, suppliers, parts suppliers, auto maintenance shops and everything else like that," Steinhauer said.

Steinhauer says they have seen more cyberattacks like this recently.

"A lot of times attackers are after larger businesses because they have more resources, more money that they can try to extort them using a tactic called ransomware," Steinhauer said.

He says there are two parts to this attack—a service aspect which causes the dealerships to not be able to operate, and the personnel aspect which worries him.

"The other aspect of it is your private information that's held by all these dealerships in this bigger system," Steinhauer said. "So, that's another big piece of it that worries me a little bit more is, you know, whose data do they have?"

He says there is no need for people to panic, just be aware.

"What you want to do is be wary of any incoming messages, phone calls, text messages, emails, anything like that that's maybe trying to get you to act, creating a false sense of urgency," Steinhauer said. "Because attackers are going to use this news, they're going to use this publicity of this breach to try to trick people into other social engineering."

Steinhauer adds that if you do receive a call or message from a dealership claiming you were impacted by the breach, to hang up and call the dealership directly to find out if it is true or not.