Ransomware hits CDK Global, public sector targets in June

The prevalent threat continued to cause disruptions last month as city halls were forced to close and auto dealerships faced downstream effects after an attack against CDK Global.

While one of June’s most significant ransomware attacks occurred against software vendor CDK Global, the threat also heavily affected local governments and brought public services to a standstill.

Ransomware attacks continued against the public sector last month. Several U.S.-based schools and cities reported network disruptions in June that forced closures and difficult ransom demand decisions.

Though local governments, cities and schools took the brunt of the attacks, CDK Global suffered a ransomware attack that highlighted how disruptive the threat continues to be for victim organizations.

On June 18, Illinois-based CDK Global began experiencing outages due to a ransomware attack. CDK Global is an automotive technology provider that currently serves 15,000 dealerships. In a statement to The Record, CDK Global spokesperson Lisa Finney said the vendor proactively forced most of its systems offline to contain the attack, which caused disruptions that significantly affected its downstream customers.

One customer, Sonic Automotive, said in an 8-K filing on June 19 that CDK was notifying customers that certain system operations were suspended...