Article content TORONTO — An auto industry group on Monday warned dealerships to be alert for scammers as outages continue after cyberattacks last week. The alert comes as CDK Global, an Illinois-based company that provides software for several auto dealers across Canada and the U.S.
, was hit by back-to-back cyberattacks on Wednesday that led to a widespread outage. Within 24 hours of the outage last week, Canadian Automobile Dealers Association president Tim Reuss said, members flagged attempts from scammers to steal their log-in credentials by impersonating company representatives. “When this was happening,” Reuss said of the cyberattacks, “there were other scammers that talked to dealers and representing themselves as CDK representatives and say, ‘Hey, I’m here to help.
”‘ He said the scam attempts added insult to injury. “Not only was the supplier hit but also there were other bad actors trying to take advantage of the whole situation,” Reuss said in an interview. CDK told its customers to be careful of “bad actors” posing as members or affiliates of CDK to try to obtain system access by contacting customers.
It urged them to be cautious of any attempted phishing. The dealership management system, which helps run day-to-day operations such as transactions and service appointments, remains core to the operations, Reuss said. Dealerships have remained open but workers have moved to pen and paper to record information instead of the computer system.
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