Christie’s Falls Victim of Cyber Attack and Continues to Sell $114.7 Million of Art Online

Christies Auction House fell victim of a cyber attack on Friday May 10^th 2024, this Cyber attack while unknown if resolved as Christies mentioned they are still looking into it. As of the following Tuesday May 15th, the website appeared to still be down. Raising concerns for collectors and consignors alike. The outcome of Tuesday’s evening sale caused worry as the attack could impact sales of $500 million worth of art. 

As cyber attacks become more frequent within society it is not unusual for such a large company to become victim. A well known quote in cyber business is “every company has already been hacked or doesn’t know that they are currently hacked.” The art market has been noticeably fragile & challenging for consignors to enter; recently this attack displays a different sense of vulnerability; security. 

There seems to be lots of confusion surrounding the term “hackers” which is relatively broad within tech, as there are different types of hackers. Also trying to differ between if it was hackers or a cyber attack is just nonsense. Hackers deploy cyber attacks—cyberattacks don’t create and deploy themselves.

If it wasn’t a cyberattack Christies would have made a claim that their servers were down and needed maintenance and this issue wouldn’t be  a concern.

I came across an ArtNews article where art advisor Elizabeth Fiore mentioned “ There are still great pieces of art, and still buyers to buy them.” Artnews also mentioned that Christies declined to point fingers at hackers or a cyberattack.

During a cyber attack once the data is stolen—it’s gone. Data can be scattered across the world in seconds; email accounts, Christies login usernames and passwords, bidding history attached to the full name of users along with, credit cards & bank accounts. I believe one of the most interesting points is that data about where specific artworks can probably be traced to the owner verifying where they reside. It is not a small concern. 

Christies also told the Wall Street Journal that they would inform customers if any personal access was accessed or stolen. “ We’re still working on resolving the incident, but we want to make sure we’re continuing our sales and assuring our clients that it’s safe to bid,” Christies chief executive Guillaume Cerutti told the Wall Street Journal.

They are still working on resolving the incident but want to make sure that they are continuing sales? As I understand during the digital age Christie’s understands that the company relies on a majority of their sales through online as a majority prefer to bid online.

Rather than prioritizing the security of their clients and staff they are concerned about maintaining sales.

Christie’s should delay all sales until they can provide their consumers an honest answer rather than declining to answer specific questions and proceeding to conduct sales, yes the consigners may be disappointed but it already takes months for an art work to be sold through auction, so consigners could wait a bit longer. You don’t sell on auction if you are looking for ‘quick money”  

This conversation is bigger than the art, and Christie’s is falling short on transparency. 

Throughout Tuesday’s evening sales at Christie’s, the hammer closed, with an under estimate of $114.7 million; $386 million less than the proposed estimate.

As of Thursday May 16th the Christie’s website is again offline .