In May, Christie’s was forced to delay its Geneva Rare Watches auction by one day after being targeted by criminals. The sale was expected to occur on 13 May.
The auction house has since conceded that a ‘limited’ amount of customer personal data was stolen during the back; however, sales have continued without interruption.
While the auction house did not name the criminals responsible for the breach, the ‘RansomHub’ gang recently added Christie’s data to its online portal.
The cybercriminals claimed to have the ID document details and other sensitive personal information of around 500,000 Christie's clients. The entry has since been updated to state the hackers have sold the stolen data via their own auction platform.
Chris Pierson, CEO of BlackCloak, told The Guardian that Christie’s key concern was damage to its reputation after this incident.
“Although the most recent Christie’s breach may not involve financial information, it may contain contact information for their high net-worth clients – and that’s potentially worrisome because it could lead to the commission of further cybercrime,” he said.
“The main issue for Christie’s is reputational, and they need to get ahead of it in terms of communication with their clients and make sure they know what information is out there so they can protect themselves and to know what Christie’s is doing to make sure this does not happen again."
Despite the interruption, the Geneva Rare Watches went ahead the following day, with eight watches from the private collection of Formula 1 star Michael Schumacher selling for $USD4.4 million ($AUD6.64 million).
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