Nearly a week after first announcing a “network outage” that shut all of its money transfer services down, MoneyGram is still working to restore its core operations. The company has since confirmed that the outage has actually been caused by a cyber attack, but is remaining tight-lipped about the specifics.
The cyber attack has led to a total shutdown of the company’s money transfer services, with both in-person and online options unavailable. MoneyGram will only say that law enforcement has been involved, but the extended downtime points to a ransomware attack that the company is struggling to recover from.
MoneyGram cyber attack caused days-long business shutdown
Ransomware is a solid guess given that the cyber attack has essentially paralyzed the whole business for an extended period. The usual situation would be that the company refused a ransom demand and is restoring from backups and scouring its systems for continued presence of the threat actor, but it is always possible that they did pay a ransom and were double-crossed.
Whatever the case, MoneyGram customers have a right to be seriously concerned. Thus far the company has only said that any pending money transfers would eventually be completed when systems are restored (though there is still no word as to when that will be). But ransomware attacks are generally accompanied by data theft, and customers still have no idea if banking or personal information was taken. If a ransom demand was not paid, that could mean their data will be dumped to the dark web.
MoneyGram does not have much of a documented history of cyber attacks, but it has had repeated issues with fending off scammers throughout its 26-year history. The Department of Justice took it to court in 2012 for failure to adequately protect its customers, particularly senior citizens, and reimbursements for money transfers sent to scammers connected to this case only began going out in 2023.
MoneyGram says money transfers will proceed, but no word yet on personal info
MoneyGram is second only to Western Union among the world’s international money transfer services, and it operates in over 200 countries. One of the biggest groups that makes regular use of it is migrant workers, who use it to send money to family members back in their native country. The company has about 50 million customers per year and processes about $200 billion USD in transactions, so even a week of total shutdown represents very serious problems and a likely huge loss of revenue.
MoneyGram has only said thus far that it had restored “some key systems” over the weekend, but is now well into the following week with its money transfer services still unavailable. This includes partners that offer its services in-person at their locations, such as Walmarts and local grocery stores. The company is headquartered in Texas and thus faces relatively little in terms of regulations requiring it to promptly disclose cyber attacks to the public, so customers may be looking at an extended wait to learn how damaging this may have been to them.
