High-End Christie’s given ransom deadline by attackers
May 2024 by Dr Darren Williams, CEO and Founder of Blackfog
News has emerged that the hacker group, RansomHub is threatening to release the sensitive data of high-end Christie’s art auction house in New York, including financial data and client addresses by the end of May, if no ransom is paid.
Darren Williams, CEO and Founder, Blackfog, notes the severity of risk to Christie’s high-profile clients’ data.
“The clock is ticking for Christies Art House who has a major decision to make now that criminal gang RansomHub has implemented a payment deadline. With the personal and financial data belonging to their high-profile clients at risk, this is indeed quite worrying.
The ‘to pay or not to pay’ dilemma is a serious issue for all types of organisations who are facing a rising wave of ransomware attacks. High profile organisations such as Christie’s, which sells high value items upwards of £600 million, will always be on the radar or cyber attackers looking for a quick win with large financial gain.
Once the data is in the hands of the attackers, the focus must be on handling the incident and repercussions as quickly as possible, leaning on experts to help ease the process when possible. Once the clean up is done, the focus must shift to preventing these attacks in the future by implementing technology designed to prevent the exfiltration of data, mitigating the risks of future attacks and extortion."
RansomHub, the attacker group behind this attack, is quite new, first identified by BlackFog in February of this year. The criminal gang has since claimed attacks on multiple organisations – notably UnitedHealth Group, American Clinical Solutions and now Christie’s art auction house in New York.