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Hackers hold Travelex to ransom

Hackers are demanding a ransom from Travelex in return for giving the foreign exchange bureau back control of its IT systems and customer data.

1 comment

Hackers hold Travelex to ransom

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

On New Year's Eve, Travelex was forced to pull the plug on its websites in 30 countries after discovering a software virus infection.

In a statement, the Metropolitan Police has now confirmed that hackers behind the attack are demanding payment. A deadline is believed to have been set.

Says the Met: "On Thursday, 2 January, the Met's Cyber Crime Team were contacted with regards to a reported ransomware attack involving a foreign currency exchange. Enquiries into the circumstances are ongoing."

The hackers are believed to be demanding a $3 million payout to restore services.

The outage has had a domino effect at banks which rely on the Travelex service, including Tesco Bank, HSBC, Barclays and Virgin Money.

Travelex has come under fire for its response to the hack. The firm's website still has a notice telling customers that it is down due to "planned maintenance". Meanwhile no email on the situation has been sent to customers, although questions are being answered on social media.

With the outage ongoing, the firm says that its network of branches continues to provide foreign currency services, albeit manually.

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Comments: (1)

Hitesh Thakkar Technology Evangelist (Financial Technology) at SME - Fintech startups (APAC and Africa)

This coverage is Half information. As on Jan 8 also customers are kept in dark on damage caused due to attack is not good sign.

Travelex must be having it's IT security team and can hire experts to help and same need to be covered as such incidents keep Top management, it's IT team on full throttle 24*7 to resolve the issue. Six days of such result is not sufficient to know the damage attack has caused?

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