The Louvre museum at one point had its own name as one of the passwords to its video surveillance system, French newspaper Libération first reported.
The iconic Paris museum in October was the scene of a heist where thieves stole several valuable Napoleonic jewels. The French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) audited the Louvre’s security system back in 2014, when it found that the password to the server overseeing the museum’s video surveillance system was simply “LOUVRE,” and warned that the same server could be exploited to commit a robbery if accessed by the wrong person, Libération reported.
In addition to the eponymous password to the video surveillance, the museum’s password to access a security program published by French cybersecurity company Thales Group was “THALES” at the time of the audit, according to Libération.
“An attacker who manages to take control of this network would be able to facilitate damage or even theft of artworks,” stated ANSSI in its 2014 audit report, obtained by Libération, originally in French.
“The applications and systems deployed on the security network present numerous vulnerabilities,” the audit report added. “From this access point, it is then possible to compromise the security network … to damage the video surveillance system by compromising outdated servers … to modify the access rights granted to a badge by compromising the database used by the badge access control system,” the audit report added.
The Louvre had also used the then-14-year-old operating system Windows 2000 for its office network at the time of the 2014 audit, Libération reported. ANSSI called the system “obsolete” and urged the museum to change its passwords so they were more complex than “LOUVRE” and “THALES.”
It is unclear whether the passwords had been changed following the audit, and, if so, what they had been changed to.
Another audit was conducted on the Louvre’s security system in 2017, this time by another French government agency, according to Libération. The audit, found similar to the one conducted by ANSSI three years earlier, found “serious shortcomings” in the “overall system.” The 2017 audit report warned that while the Louvre “has thus far been relatively spared, it can no longer ignore the potential threat of an attack with potentially dramatic consequences.”
According to Microsoft support, a “strong” password must have a minimum of 12 characters but preferably over 14, and contain a mix of capital and lowercase letters as well as numbers and symbols. To qualify as “strong,” a password must also not be the “name of a person, character, product, or organization,” and instead be “difficult for others to guess,” per Microsoft.
Four thieves dressed as construction workers broke into the Louvre’s Apollo Gallery on Oct. 18 using a cherry picker and stole several pieces of French Crown Jewels totaling about $100 million in value. French police arrested two of the suspects on Oct. 25 — one at the airport as he was reportedly about to flee to Algeria. Four days later, five more people were arrested in connection to the heist, but three were released without receiving charges.
A total of four suspects have been charged as of Monday. Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said these suspects — three male and one female — are petty criminals living in the suburbs of Paris and not known to be linked to organized crime.
Authorities have yet to recover any of the eight jewels successfully stolen in the heist.
The Louvre is currently the home of many iconic and timeless masterpieces such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the nearly four-millennia-old Code of Hammurabi.
When asked for comment a spokesperson for the Louvre referred the Daily Caller News Foundation to the museum’s Oct. 19 press release regarding the jewel heist.
The release, originally in French, did not address the security system’s passwords but stated that “a new security master plan” at the museum “is being implemented and is beginning to be rolled out.” These new security measures are set to include the “deployment of new-generation cameras,” “perimeter detection,” and a “new security control center,” according to the release.
A spokesperson for ANSSI told the DCNF that the agency did not have any information to share on the matter.
Thee French Ministry of the Interior did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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