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Many car dealerships in the United States and Canada remained severely disrupted on June 20, 2024, after CDK Global reported an additional cyber incident late the previous day. CDK kept most of its dealer-management systems offline while it investigated and protected its environment. Dealers were not universally closed, but many had to process sales, financing, service appointments, repairs, registration work, and paperwork manually.
The outage was unusually broad because CDK’s platform serves as an operational hub for roughly 15,000 dealerships across North America. Its systems connect sales, inventory, customer records, accounting, financing-related workflows, service, parts, and other dealership functions. The incident showed how an attack on one specialized software provider can affect thousands of otherwise separate businesses at the same time.
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What happened on the second day of the CDK outage?
CDK first notified customers on June 19, 2024, that it had suspended certain systems after detecting a cybersecurity incident. Later that night, the company reported an additional incident. As a precaution, CDK said most systems would remain unavailable on June 20 while it investigated and worked to secure the environment.
That second incident is what turned a major one-day disruption into a continuing outage. CDK did not provide an estimated restoration time on June 20, and its customer-support teams were temporarily unavailable as a precaution. Dealerships that relied on CDK’s dealer-management system, or DMS, lost access to a number of the digital tools used to coordinate daily operations.
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At a glance:
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| When did the disruption begin? | June 19, 2024 |
| Why did it continue into a second day? | CDK reported an additional incident late on June 19 and kept most systems offline on June 20. |
| Who was affected? | Many CDK customers in the United States and Canada; not every dealership used CDK or experienced the same interruption. |
| Were dealerships closed? | Not universally. Many continued operating through paper forms, manual processes, and alternative systems. |
| When did recovery begin? | CDK began restoring systems in phases around June 26, with broad access returning by early July. |
Why did one software outage affect so many dealerships?
A dealer-management system is more than a single sales application. It is the central record-keeping and workflow platform for many auto retailers. CDK describes DMS software as integrating functions such as sales, accounting, service, and inventory. Dealership-group filings also described CDK-connected systems as supporting customer relationship management, sales, inventory, accounting, and service operations.
That integration is efficient under normal circumstances. A vehicle sale, for example, may involve a customer record, inventory status, pricing, financing documents, accounting entries, registration information, and communications with other parties. Service operations can similarly depend on customer histories, repair orders, parts availability, scheduling, technician workflows, and invoicing.
When a central provider shut down its systems to contain and investigate an attack, several departments could lose access at once. The outage did not mean that every connected manufacturer, lender, registration agency, or vendor had been independently hacked. It meant that dealerships could no longer reliably reach the central systems or connected applications through which many of those workflows were managed.
This is a classic example of third-party concentration risk: thousands of businesses can be operationally dependent on one technology supplier even though those businesses are separately owned and separately managed.
CDK cyberattack timeline
- June 19, 2024: CDK disclosed a cybersecurity incident and suspended certain systems. Dealer groups reported losing access to core CDK dealer-management and connected applications.
- Late June 19: CDK told customers that an additional incident had occurred. The company kept most systems offline and extended the disruption into June 20.
- June 20: Dealerships across the United States and Canada continued operating with major limitations. Many turned to paper forms, manual calculations, alternative processes, and delayed data entry.
- June 24–25: CDK communications began referring to the event as a cyberattack and, by June 25, as a ransom event. Public reports connected the incident to the BlackSuit ransomware group, although that attribution was not presented as an official contemporaneous law-enforcement finding or early CDK confirmation.
- June 26: CDK began restoring affected systems in phases, according to a dealership-group filing.
- June 30: One major dealership group reported that transaction processing had resumed and that it had regained access to affected DMS and CRM systems.
- July 1–4: CDK said it was rapidly bringing dealers back online and expected all dealer customers to have access to its management platform by no later than July 4. Reports on July 2 indicated that most connections were live while restoration continued.
The restoration was therefore not a single switch being turned back on. Different systems, dealers, integrations, and ancillary applications could return at different times.
What dealerships could and could not do during the outage
The precise effects varied by dealership, system, and location. The most accurate description is that many CDK customers experienced major disruption to core workflows, rather than that every dealership lost every function.
Sales and financing
Sales staff could still interact with customers and show vehicles, but completing a transaction could be substantially more difficult. Dealerships reported using paper forms and manual processes for deal jackets, customer information, pricing, financing-related paperwork, and other steps that would normally be handled inside connected digital systems.
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Some transactions could proceed and be entered into the system later. Others could be delayed while staff waited for access to records, lender-related steps, registration processing, or internal approvals. A customer who had already agreed to buy a vehicle might therefore have experienced a delay in delivery or paperwork rather than a cancellation.
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Service, repairs, and parts
Service departments were also affected. Repair orders, appointment scheduling, customer histories, parts workflows, technician processes, and service invoicing could require manual handling when the normal DMS and related tools were unavailable.
That did not necessarily mean that a dealership could not repair a vehicle. In many cases, employees could write up work on paper, consult other records, contact customers by phone, and enter information after the systems returned. The practical result could still be longer wait times, difficulty confirming appointments, delayed invoices, and additional visits or calls.
Inventory, accounting, and back-office work
Inventory records and accounting functions were among the core operations affected for many CDK customers. A dealership could have vehicles physically on its lot while lacking a reliable, current digital view of vehicle status, deal status, transfers, or related accounting entries.
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Some dealership groups also reported disruption to customer relationship management and employee-related or payroll processes. The extent depended on which CDK products and integrations a particular retailer used.
How the outage affected car shoppers and service customers
For consumers, the most visible effects were likely to be delays and confusion rather than a complete shutdown of every dealership.
- New or used vehicle purchases: A deal might take longer to complete, particularly if financing, registration, title, or accounting steps depended on unavailable systems.
- Vehicle delivery: A customer could have signed paperwork but still face a delay while the dealership completed registration or other required processing.
- Trade-ins: Appraisals and vehicle records could be handled manually, but documentation and inventory updates might have to wait.
- Service appointments: A scheduled repair could be delayed, or staff might have to confirm the appointment and vehicle history manually.
- Service invoices: Customers could receive handwritten or delayed paperwork while the dealership reconstructed the work order.
- Customer communications: CRM access problems could make it harder for employees to locate records or send routine updates.
If a customer was affected, the most useful step was to ask the dealership exactly which part of the transaction was incomplete. A dealer’s inability to access CDK did not automatically mean that a contract was void, a payment was lost, a repair was not recorded, or a customer’s data had been stolen. Those questions depended on the individual transaction and the dealership’s backup procedures.
An outage is not the same as a confirmed data breach
The system shutdown established that CDK’s environment had been affected by a cybersecurity event. It did not, by itself, establish that all dealership records were stolen or that every customer of every CDK dealer was affected by a data breach.
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- Service interruption: A dealership or its employees cannot access an application.
- Unauthorized access: An attacker gains access to systems or accounts.
- Data exfiltration: Information is copied or removed from an environment.
- Data-breach notification: A company determines that particular individuals may need to be notified under applicable law.
- Identity theft: Stolen information is misused to impersonate someone or commit fraud.
Later public notices indicated that CDK had a security event involving information belonging to some individuals, including a notice filed through a state government repository. The scope, information categories, and affected population should be taken from the applicable notice. It is not accurate to tell every customer who ever visited a CDK-using dealership that their data was compromised.
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Consumers who dealt with an affected dealership could ask that dealership whether their information was included in a specific notice. They should also be cautious about unsolicited emails, texts, or calls claiming to offer CDK-related assistance. However, an outage alone is not evidence of identity theft.
Was BlackSuit responsible?
CDK initially described the event as a cyber incident. By June 25, company communications referred to it as a ransom event. Media and cybersecurity reports later linked the attack to BlackSuit, a ransomware group.
That attribution should be qualified unless supported by a later authoritative finding. The safest descriptions are reported ransomware attack, ransom event, or an attack that was publicly attributed in reports to the suspected BlackSuit group. The attacker, ransom amount, payment status, and negotiation details were not all reliably established in the official public records reviewed for this report.
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Business and financial impact
The disruption affected more than a dealership’s computer screens. Public-company filings showed measurable operational and financial consequences.
Sonic Automotive estimated that the outage reduced pretax income by approximately $30 million in the quarter ended June 30, 2024. The company also cited additional compensation expenses and a significant effect on new-vehicle unit sales. Other large dealership groups warned investors that the incident could materially affect their results.
Industry estimates also suggested that some June sales were delayed and recorded in July rather than permanently lost. The National Automobile Dealers Association cited an estimate of approximately 50,000 vehicle units affected in June 2024. That figure is an attributed industry estimate, not a final audited count of permanent sales losses.
The distinction matters. A vehicle sale postponed for several days can hurt a dealership’s monthly results and create real costs, even if the transaction eventually closes. But it should not automatically be described as a vehicle sale that disappeared permanently.
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How and when CDK recovered
CDK restored access in stages. A dealership filing reported that restoration began around June 26, transaction processing resumed by June 30, and access to affected DMS and CRM systems had returned by the time of the filing. CDK separately told dealers it expected all customers to have access to its management platform by July 4.
That makes the overall restoration period roughly two weeks from the initial June 19 shutdown to the early-July target. It does not mean every feature, integration, or third-party application returned simultaneously. Some dealers could reconnect before others, and ancillary tools could follow a different schedule from the core platform.
Dealerships also had to reconcile the work performed while systems were offline. Restoring access was only one step; employees then had to enter paper transactions, match payments, update inventory, complete accounting work, and resolve duplicate or incomplete records.
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The incident exposed a difficult operational reality: a dealership can have functioning vehicles, employees, phones, and internet access while still being unable to run normal business because a critical SaaS provider is unavailable.
For dealership owners and IT leaders, the practical lessons include:
- Map critical dependencies. Document which systems control sales, service, accounting, CRM, inventory, registration, payroll, lender communication, and manufacturer reporting. Identify which functions depend on the same provider.
- Maintain usable offline procedures. Keep current paper forms, approval procedures, contact lists, payment instructions, service workflows, and escalation contacts available when the primary system cannot be reached.
- Protect and test backups. Backups should be protected against ransomware, separated from ordinary user accounts where appropriate, and tested through actual restoration exercises. A backup of a dealership’s own records cannot restore a third-party provider’s unavailable application, but it can help preserve local records and support reconstruction.
- Plan for delayed synchronization. Decide how staff will identify transactions created offline, prevent duplicate entries, reconcile payments, and verify that inventory and customer records are correct after restoration.
- Exercise communications plans. Employees need clear instructions about what to tell customers, who can approve exceptions, how to report suspected phishing, and how to contact vendors, insurers, incident-response providers, law enforcement, and relevant government agencies.
- Review vendor continuity commitments. Contracts and vendor assessments should address incident notification, recovery objectives, data export, integration dependencies, support availability, and the process for operating during a prolonged outage.
- Reduce unnecessary concentration. A dealership may not be able to eliminate its dependence on a major DMS, but it can identify which records and workflows need an independent fallback and whether data can be exported in a usable format.
These measures are not a way to prevent the 2024 incident after the fact. They are the type of resilience practices recommended in cybersecurity guidance for organizations facing ransomware and critical technology outages.
A separate legal development should not be confused with the cyberattack
The CDK incident also occurred against the backdrop of separate litigation involving the dealer-management-system market. A federal court later approved a settlement in broader antitrust litigation, and the settlement website stated that eligible dealerships could share in settlements totaling $129.5 million.
That proceeding concerned alleged antitrust conduct in the DMS market. It was not a finding that CDK caused the 2024 cyberattack, nor did it resolve questions about cyberattack liability, ransom negotiations, data exposure, or individual dealership losses.
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What remains important to understand
The June 2024 CDK outage was nationwide in the sense that dealerships across the United States were affected, but it was not universal. Not every U.S. dealership used CDK, and CDK customers did not all experience identical outages.
It was also not accurate to say that every dealership shut down. Many retailers continued selling vehicles and servicing cars using manual procedures, although at reduced speed and with additional risk of paperwork backlogs and reconciliation problems.
Finally, the event demonstrated a broad operational outage and was later described by CDK as a ransom event. Those facts should not be expanded into unsupported claims that every customer’s data was stolen, that every dealership suffered the same financial loss, or that BlackSuit’s role and the ransom details were conclusively established by official authorities.
Frequently Asked Questions
Were all car dealerships in the United States closed during the CDK outage?
No. Many CDK customers experienced major disruptions, but dealerships were not universally closed. Groups including Group 1 Automotive reported continuing operations through paper forms, manual procedures, and other workarounds. The effect varied by dealership and by the CDK products or integrations it used.
Did the CDK outage mean that customers’ personal information was stolen?
Not necessarily. A service outage, unauthorized access, data theft, and identity theft are different events. Later notices indicated that information belonging to some individuals was involved in a security event, but the available evidence does not support saying that every CDK dealership customer’s data was compromised.
Who carried out the CDK cyberattack?
Public reports linked the attack to the BlackSuit ransomware group, but that attribution should be described as reported or suspected unless supported by a later authoritative finding. CDK’s early communications described a cyber incident and later referred to a ransom event.
How long did the CDK outage last?
The initial shutdown began June 19, 2024. CDK began phased restoration around June 26, some transaction processing had resumed by June 30, and CDK said all dealer customers should have access by July 4. Systems and third-party integrations did not necessarily return at the same time.
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The outage significantly disrupted sales and caused delays, and dealership groups reported financial effects. Industry estimates suggested that some June transactions were postponed and recorded in July. Estimates such as the approximately 50,000 affected units cited by NADA should not be treated as an audited count of permanent lost sales.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: The second day of the CDK outage was caused by an additional incident reported late on June 19, 2024, which kept most of CDK’s systems offline on June 20. Many dealerships could still operate, but sales, financing, service, inventory, accounting, CRM, and registration workflows often had to be handled manually. The event was a major example of third-party concentration risk, but it should not be confused with proof that every dealership closed or every customer’s data was stolen.
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