Famous Italian art museum Uffizi Gallery targeted by hackers

Uffizi Gallery, a world-famous art museum in Florence, Italy, has admitted to suffering a cyber attack in February but denied that the attack had any impact on its security systems or data.

Uffizi Gallery is one of Italy’s most popular art museums, holding a rich collection of priceless works from the period of the Italian Renaissance. The museum primarily holds famous paintings and sculptures previously owned by the House of Medici, including those created by the likes of Leonardo Da Vinci, Sandro Boticelli, Mosaccio, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello.

Earlier this month, Italian newspaper Correre della Sera reported that Uffizi Gallery suffered a serious cyber attack on 1st February that allowed hackers to hijack the museum’s IT network, wipe its servers, and exfiltrate sensitive information such as the museum’s entry codes, passwords, alarm systems and locations of surveillance cameras and sensors.

The hackers reportedly sent a ransom note to the museum’s director, setting off a chain of events at Uffizi Gallery, such as the sudden closure of a section of the Pitti Palace which houses multiple exhibitions - the Treasury of the Grand Dukes, the Museum of Russian Icons, the Palatine Gallery, the Imperial and Royal Apartments, the Gallery of Modern Art and the Museum of Costume and Fashion.

Correre della Sera reported that jewels from the Treasury of the Grand Dukes and precious pieces of decorative arts once owned by the Medici family were transferred to a vault managed by the Bank of Italy.

In a statement shared with Reuters, Uffizi Gallery admitted that the cyber attack took place on 1st February but refuted reports that hackers had accessed security maps of the museum’s buildings. The museum said it removed valuables to the Bank of Italy due to restoration work being carried out at the Pitti Palace and it had nothing to do with the cyber incident.

The museum added that the cyber attack caused limited disruption to its IT network and it took some time to restore data from backups, and that the cyber incident did not compromise photographic archives as the museum had backups in place.