CDK Global offers widely used business management software. Car dealerships are its primary clients. In June 2024, the company suffered a debilitating cyberattack that left approximately 15,000 dealership locations paralyzed. The outage devastated revenue streams for days on end, coming back online fully after two weeks. Now, CDK Global is looking at a $100 million bill with certain car dealer payees. Interestingly, the settlement has nothing to do with the recent cyberattack.

In 2017, several car dealers filed a class-action lawsuit accusing CDK and another company of antitrust violations. The lawsuit claimed that the companies artificially raised software prices to “stifle competition,” per Automotive News via Quartz.

If approved by a judge, the settlement money will be paid out to dealers that brought the 2017 class-action lawsuit. As such, the $100 million bill is completely unrelated to the June cyberattack.

Car dealers have and will likely continue to enter into litigation against CDK based on financial damages caused by the software outage.

During software downtime, dealerships were unable to perform basic yet essential operational tasks. Revenue generation halted suddenly for thousands of businesses. Many resorted to legacy systems using paper tracking. However, the cyberattack left all CDK clients technologically “bricked” and unable to function normally. In turn, many new and used car sales and service departments shuttered across the country for the duration of the outage.  

Yesterday, MotorBiscuit reported that Leader Automotive Group, a large dealership group based in Illinois, might close all 18 of its U.S. locations. Its parent company, AutoCanada Inc., cited the CDK Global cyberattack among its justifications for the closures.

According to AutoCanada officials, the CDK outage caused a stifling 15-20% hit to its expected Q2 2024 revenue.