The Tribune

Car dealerships in North America are still wrestling with major disruptions that started last week with cyberattacks on a company whose software is used widely in the auto retail sales sector.

CDK Global, a company that provides software for thousands of auto dealers in the US and Canada, was hit by back-to-back cyberattacks on Wednesday. That led to an outage that has continued to impact operations.

For prospective car buyers, that’s meant delays at dealerships or vehicle orders written up by hand. There’s no immediate end in sight, but CDK says it expects the restoration process to take “several days” to complete.

On Monday, Group 1 Automotive Inc, a $4 billion automotive retailer, said it is using “alternative processes” to sell cars to its customers. Lithia Motors and AutoNation, two other dealership chains, also disclosed that they implemented workarounds to keep their operations going.

• Indonesia’s national data centre has been compromised by a hacking group asking for a $8m ransom that the government says it won’t pay.

The cyberattack has disrupted services of more than 200 government agencies at both the national and regional levels since last Thursday.

Some government services have returned — immigration services at airports and elsewhere are now functional — but efforts continue at restoring other services such as investment licensing, Pangerapan told reporters Monday.

The attackers have held data hostage and offered a key for access in return for the $8m ransom, said PT Telkom Indonesia’s director of network and IT solutions, Herlan Wijanarko, without giving further details.

Wijanarko said the company, in collaboration with authorities at home and abroad, is investigating and trying to break the encryption that made data inaccessible.