CDK cyberattack paralyzes car dealerships across the US. Here’s what you should know.

CDK Global, a company that provides software to manage sales and other services to car dealerships across the United States, was hacked, causing the company to temporarily shut down most of its systems.

This effectively excludes around 15,000 car dealerships from sales.

“We are currently investigating a cyber incident,” a company spokesperson told CBS News. “Out of an abundance of caution and concern for our customers, we have shut down most of our systems and are working diligently to get everything back up and running as quickly as possible.”

The company did not provide any information on when it expects to resume operations.

What is CDK?

CDK provides dealers with tools to manage payroll, inventory and office operations.

The company also touts its cybersecurity capabilities on its website. “CDK Cybersecurity Solutions offers a three-tier cybersecurity strategy to prevent, protect and respond to cyberattacks so you can defend your dealership,” it says.

When did the cyber attack begin?

The cyberattack on CDK Global began Tuesday evening, cybersecurity news site Bleeping Computer reported Wednesday, bringing the 15,000 car dealerships it serves offline.

Who or which group is behind the cyber attack is currently unknown.

How do the dealers react?

Some retailers appeared to be getting creative to keep doing business despite the outage. Retailer employees posted on Reddit about the outage on Wednesday, sharing that they had been relying on spreadsheets and sticky notes to sell customers small parts and make repairs, but hadn’t seen much sales.

One employee asked other dealership employees, “How many of you are standing around because your entire store is running on CDK?” under the headline “CDK down,” with users in Wisconsin and Colorado confirming that their dealership transaction systems were offline.