BOSTON – Kia Motors America says it’s restoring services crippled by a computer network outage that began Saturday and which apparently affected dealers’ ability to order vehicles and parts and knocked offline a smartphone app that owners use to remotely start and warm up vehicles.
Both Kia and affiliated automaker Hyundai Motor America, which reported a less severe IT outage it said also began Saturday, said they had no evidence the problems were caused by ransomware.
Neither would provide an explanation for what caused them. In a statement on Thursday, Kia cited “online speculation” that it was hit by ransomware, which scrambles data until a victim pays to have it decoded. “At this time, and based on the best and most current information,