Travelex Hackers Demand $6 Million Worth Of Bitcoin Ransom

The Travelex hackers, or the attackers that hacked the foreign currency exchange company, demanded a payment of $6 million worth of Bitcoin after the hack and in the bitcoin news now, we take a closer look at the developments of the situation.

The UK currency exchange platform Travelex was shut down due to a ransomware malware following a network breach. According to the BBC, the hackers launched the attack on New Year’s Eve and forced the company to power down the website and the systems entirely. The Travelex hackers hit the company when many of the staff members were away for the holidays. The platform has operations in about 30 countries with 1,200 branches across the world, most of which were forced to operate manually or to stop all services. A notice on the Travelex twitter feed stated that they took down the websites in order to ‘’protect data and prevent the spread of the virus.’’

The reports add that the ransomware group called Sodinokibi was responsible for the attack and wanted the currency exchange to pay $6 million. some other reports say that the group specified Bitcoin as the method of payment through a website with a top-level domain that was registered in China back in 2019. Once they settled, the hackers agreed to provide the decryption tools to enable the IT staff of the company to disable the ransomware and to access their files again.
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The research showed that the prevalence of ransomware could have heavily impacted the prices of bitcoin in 2019.

The reports also mentioned that the computers with confidential information such as clients’ names and bank accounts had been infected by the malware by adding a random character string to the end of each encrypted file. Other UK based companies that relied on Travlex’s forex services including Barclays, HSBC, Virgin Money, Sainsbury’s Bank, First Direct and others have also been disrupted.

Thousands of customers across the world were blocked from using the app and were unable to access the funds or to make transactions on the Travelex currency card. The group also known as REvil, offered criminal gangs to rent their ransomware for a cut of the profits. The ransomware note that was delivered to the platform read:

 “If you do not co-operate with our service – for us it does not matter. But you will lose your time and your data, cause just we have the private key. In practice, time is much more valuable than money.”