Security News > 2024 > August > Sonic Automotive says ransomware-linked CDK software outage cost it $30M

One of the US's largest car dealerships says the IT outage caused by CDK Global's June ransomware attack cost it approximately $30 million.

Sonic Automotive filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday alongside the release of its quarterly financials, confirming that like its rivals, it too was materially affected by the incident at CDK. Of the total $30 million drop in pre-tax GAAP income, $11.6 million of that related to additional compensation paid to staff, and possibly external contractors, who helped to handle the outage, it said.

"Overall, the Sonic Automotive team continued to execute at a high level, despite operational challenges in the last 12 days of the second quarter as a result of the previously announced CDK Global software outage," said David Smith, chairman and CEO at Sonic Automotive.

"As of today, Sonic's access to the information systems provided by CDK has been restored we experienced operational disruptions throughout July related to the functionality of certain CDK customer lead applications, inventory management applications, and related third-party application integrations with CDK.".

AutoNation said the CDK outage put a dampener on an otherwise strong quarter and previously said it was still facing IT disruption in late July.

So after the incident unraveled, economic consultants at Anderson Economic Group estimated the total losses for CDK customers to be well into the hundreds of millions per week, rising as the disruption continued.

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