The exchange clearly defined the incident as a ‘malware’ attack. Sharing their statement in a tweet, Travelex mentioned,
Travelex confirms that a software virus was discovered on New Year’s Eve which has compromised some of its services.They also confirmed the shut down of their services, which they did as a precaution.
As a precautionary measure in order to protect data and prevent the spread of the virus, we immediately took all our systems offline.https://twitter.com/TravelexUK/status/1212840156480315401
Though the exchange only stated about the disruption of ‘some’ services, it actually caused huge trouble to the users. The attack potentially affected the partnering businesses as well, such as Tesco Bank.
https://twitter.com/tescobankhelp/status/1212700496621965312
- tescobankhelp
The disruptions also caused severe problems for the users in withdrawing money.
https://twitter.com/MattBRecruiter/status/1212884246630670339
- MattBRecruiter
https://twitter.com/MissVee0412/status/1213111811358232577
- MissVee0412
They also engaged cybersecurity experts to resolve the matter. However, until the time of writing this article, the Travelex website is still down.
While Travelex are still striving to restore their services, they assure that the incident did not affect customers' data.
For any queries, customers can contact them via their official twitter account where they are actively responding.
Before Travelex, numerous other incidents affecting different businesses also surfaced online towards the end of 2019. Some of the affected services include Poloniex cryptocurrency exchange, telemarketing firm The Heritage Company, IT service provider Synoptek, and a US Maritime facility.