Auction house Christie’s says May cyber attack impacted over 45,000 U.S. residents

British auction house Christie’s said that the recent cyber security incident it suffered in May affected more than 45,000 individuals in the United States.

 

In May, Christie’s CEO Guillaume Cerutti announced that the company was dealing with a “technology security incident” shortly after the auction house’s official website was taken offline and was replaced with a temporary website.

 

“We are managing this incident according to well-established practices, supported by experts in the field. We have made proactive decisions -including taking our main website offline,” Cerutti said.

 

In a filing with the Office of the Maine Attorney General, Christie’s said that its investigation has revealed that “an unauthorised actor accessed some of our systems and certain files stored therein between May 8, 2024, and May 9, 2024, and some files were copied from those systems on May 9, 2024.”

 

Christie’s investigation into the data security incident identified 45,798 individuals in the U.S. whose sensitive personal information was accessed by malicious actors. The affected data included names and other personal identifiers along with driver’s license numbers and non-driver identification card numbers.

 

While Christie’s found no evidence of the compromised information being misused, it advised all affected individuals to regularly monitor their credit reports, account and benefit statements and report any suspicious activity to law enforcement authorities, including the police and state attorney general.

 

It has also offered one year of complimentary identity protection and credit monitoring services through CyEx Identity Defense Total to all affected individuals.

 

The infamous RansomHub extortion group claimed responsibility for targeting the British auction house and listed it as a victim on its data leak site. The group claimed to be in possession of sensitive personal data of at least 500,000 of Christie’s private clients.