One of the world’s largest chain of money-exchange shops and arguably the largest in the UK is Travelex which has a wide range of shops where people can buy and exchange money for different countries around the world. Also, it is now known that Travelex’s owner has been caught in a governance and accounting scandal which brought the whole company down in a matter of hours.
But now, a new exclusive report from the Wall Street Journal reveals that there was something behind the scenes which we don’t know about Travelex yet. It has been revealed that Travelex paid a ransom to hackers who were presumably having control of their systems in order to free their systems from the hack. WSJ says that Travelex paid the hackers about $2.3 million in Bitcoins which is the ransom money asked by these hackers to leave their systems as they were or else damage them if the money wasn’t paid.
It is known that Travelex was hit with a ransomware attack which the company itself revealed in front of the world but it did not let anyone know about the ransom it paid for getting rid of that attack until now. Due to this report, WSJ reached out to a Travelex spokesperson who said that “the firm has taken advice from a number of experts and has kept regulators and partners informed about its efforts to manage the recovery. A U.K. law-enforcement investigation into the breach is continuing”
One cybersecurity expert says that since Travelex has paid a ransom, it is on the radar for other hackers as well. Because “It’s like with all blackmailers: Paying the ransom, you get put on the payers’ list,”. “You are one of those that are most likely to pay up. That makes you a target for everybody else.”
