Financial services firm MoneyGram admitted that its multiday outage is due to a “cybersecurity issue,” and it is working to restore its services with some success.
“MoneyGram recently identified a cybersecurity issue affecting certain of our systems,” the company said in a Sept. 23 X post.
It came days after some users reported that its services were down on Sept. 20, and hundreds more have reported MoneyGram’s outage in the past 24 hours, according to service status information aggregator DownDetector.
MoneyGram added that when it detected the issue, it “immediately launched an investigation and took protective steps to address it, including proactively taking systems offline which impacted network connectivity.”
The Dallas, Texas-headquartered firm said it was working with law enforcement and “leading external cybersecurity experts” to mitigate the issue.
Source: MoneyGram
In a Sept. 24 X post, the firm said, “We continue to make progress in successfully restoring some of our key transactional systems,” adding that it was working “around the clock.”
Once its systems are back online, current pending user transactions will be available, MoneyGram said.
MoneyGram did not disclose the specifics of the cybersecurity issue, how it happened, which of its systems in particular are affected, or if sensitive data may have been accessed.
It also has not given a timeline for when it expects its services to be fully operational.
MoneyGram did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Related: Bitcoin ransomware Akira drains $42M from more than 250 companies: FBI
The incident comes amid a rise in crypto-related ransomware attacks this year, with blockchain security firm Chainalysis reporting that 2024 has already seen a nearly 96% year-on-year rise from 2023’s $37.8 million in ransom payments.
This year’s stats were boosted by a single $75 million crypto payment to the ransomware group Dark Angels — the largest ever recorded.
MoneyGram is one of the world’s largest money transmitters and claims it processes over $200 billion a year for 50 million people. It is broadly used by immigrants in the United States to send money back to their families.
MoneyGram has edged its way into crypto, launching fiat exchange services early this year. On Sept. 18, it partnered with CEX.io to give the crypto exchange’s users access to fiat-to-stablecoin services at MoneyGram kiosks.
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