Kia Motors America experiences massive IT outage across the US

Kia Motors USA is experiencing a nationwide outage affecting IT servers, self-payment phone services, dealer platforms, and phone support.

The outage started Saturday when the Kia Owners Portal went offline and began displaying an error message stating that Kia was "experiencing an IT service outage that has impacted some internal networks."

The company's phone self-help services are also impacted, with the customer support numbers stating that they have server issues that may affect their ability to help customers.

Calling the Kia finance number also results in a pre-recorded message stating that the self-service option is not available due to scheduled maintenance.

The outage also affects the company's mobile apps, such as 'Kia Access with UVO Link', 'UVO eServices', and 'Kia Connect'.

When attempting to use the apps, users are greeted with various messages, including SQL errors, bad certificates, or maintenance messages stating there is an IT outage, as shown below.

Kia employees have told BleepingComputer that this is a nationwide outage that started Saturday morning.

A Kia dealership has told BleepingComputer that the outage is also affecting dealers' access to Kia's KGSIS (Kia Global Service Information System) and their KDealer platform.

If you have first-hand information about this outage or unreported cyberattacks, you can confidentially contact us on Signal at +16469613731 or on Wire at @lawrenceabrams-bc.

Possible ransomware attack?

One Twitter user shared that they could not pick up their car due to a ransomware attack taking down Kia's systems.

@Kia I went to the Kia dealership in Arizona and signed a new lease, yet the manager told me your computers have been down for 3 days due to Ransomware and has affected Kia all over the USA. Can’t get my car for ???? Now what?

— Amybean (@amylee62) February 16, 2021

While BleepingComputer has been  unable to independently confirm if this outage is caused by a cyberattack, the large amount of IT systems, phone services, and mixed messages about scheduled maintenance and server issues indicates that this is likely more then just a scheduled maintenance.

This outage is even more concerning since it has been ongoing for four days and dealers are being told that there is no ETA as to when it will be resolved.

When we reached out to Kia to confirm if this was a ransomware attack, Kia only stated that they are aware of the outages and are working to resolve them.

"KMA is aware of IT outages involving internal, dealer and customer-facing systems, including UVO. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers and are working to resolve the issue and restore normal business operations as quickly as possible." - Kia Motors America

Update 2/17/21: Added Kia's statement.