Ethical Hacking News
A major U.S. payment gateway, BridgePay, has confirmed a ransomware attack as the cause of its nationwide outage affecting multiple services. The incident resulted in a widespread disruption across BridgePay's platform, with some U.S. merchants reporting that they could only accept cash due to a card-processing outage. Recovery efforts are underway, but it remains unclear how long it will take for the company to restore full operations.
Ransomware attack confirmed as cause of BridgePay's nationwide outage. Outage began on February 5, 2026, at 3:29 a.m., with key systems offline by Friday afternoon. BridgePay engaged FBI, U.S. Secret Service, and external teams to investigate and resolve the issue. Payment gateway services severely impacted, causing widespread disruption for merchants and payment integrators. Recovery process being handled in a secure and responsible manner.
Payment gateway BridgePay has confirmed that a ransomware attack is responsible for the recent nationwide outage affecting its platform. The incident began on Friday, February 5, 2026, and quickly escalated into a major disruption across BridgePay's payment gateway services.
The company's status page revealed that key systems were offline, including the BridgePay Gateway API (BridgeComm), PayGuardian Cloud API, MyBridgePay virtual terminal and reporting, Hosted payment pages, PathwayLink gateway and boarding portals. The initial warnings signs appeared around 3:29 a.m., when monitoring detected degraded performance across multiple services.
In an update posted on February 6, 2026, BridgePay confirmed that the incident was cybersecurity-related and later revealed that it was caused by ransomware. The company has engaged federal law enforcement, including the FBI and U.S. Secret Service, along with external forensic and recovery teams to investigate and resolve the issue.
BridgePay's status page showed that the payment gateway services were severely impacted, suggesting a widespread disruption for merchants and payment integrators relying on the platform for card processing. The company stated that recovery could take time and that restoration is being handled "in a secure and responsible manner."
In response to the outage, some U.S. merchants began informing customers that they could only accept cash due to a nationwide card-processing outage. It is unclear whether those outages are directly related to BridgePay, as the company has not publicly confirmed which merchants or partners were affected.
The incident adds to a growing wave of ransomware attacks targeting payment infrastructure, where outages can quickly impede real-world commerce when transaction pipelines go down. The recent attack on BridgePay highlights the ongoing threat posed by cyberattacks in the financial sector and underscores the importance of robust cybersecurity measures for payment gateways and other critical infrastructure.
Related Information:
https://www.ethicalhackingnews.com/articles/A-Nation-Wide-Payment-Gateway-Outage-The-BridgePay-Ransomware-Attack-ehn.shtml
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/payment-gateway-bridgepay-confirms-ransomware-attack-behind-outage/
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ingram-micro-outage-caused-by-safepay-ransomware-attack/
https://status.bridgepaynetwork.com/
Published: Sat Feb 7 03:57:28 2026 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
