Carmakers Kia and Hyundai, both owned by the South Korea-based Hyundai Motor Group, said they had found no evidence that the outages they suffered in the past week in the United States were the result of a ransomware attack.
Kia Motors America was the first to notify customers via its website that it had been experiencing an IT service outage impacting some of its systems, including internal, customer and dealer systems. Hyundai Motor America later also confirmed some disruptions, but appeared to be less impacted.
“Kia Motors America, Inc. (Kia) has been experiencing an extended systems outage since Saturday but can confirm that the UVO app and owner’s portal are now operational,” Kia told SecurityWeek in a statement on Thursday.
“We anticipate remaining primary customer-facing affected systems will continue to come back online within the next 24-48 hours, with our most critical systems first in line. We apologize for the inconvenience to affected customers, especially those impacted by winter storms, who felt the outage of our remote start and heating feature most acutely. Kia is wholly focused on fully resolving this issue and would like to thank our customers for their continued patience,” it added.
Reports have emerged about the outages being caused by a ransomware attack on Kia and Hyundai systems. One individual claimed on Twitter that a Kia dealership in Arizona had told her that computers had been down for three days due to ransomware.
However, Kia and Hyundai have denied being hit by ransomware.
“We are aware of online speculation that Kia is subject to a ransomware attack,” Kia said via an emailed statement. “At this time, and based on the best and most current information, we can confirm that we have no evidence ..
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