A silent and very, very precise robbery left one of the most important museums in France completely vulnerable. Very early on a Tuesday, the thief entered the National Museum of Natural History in Paris with a purpose: to mock the security system and steal something very important without leaving one single trace. And they actually did! They took a few treasures worth about 640,000 dollars. What were the pieces? Gold nuggets from the 18th and 19th centuries, which the museum staff described as “priceless.”
No one noticed anything until the cleaning staff got to do their usual work and realized that there were a couple of empty showcases. And yes, it was a robbery indeed, so the museum closed the Geology and Mineralogy, which is where the pieces were exposed.
Turns out there had already been a cyberattack weeks before, and according to Le Parisien, this broke the alarms and surveillance system for the museum… the perfect opportunity for the thief to get in.
Robbing art is not something new, but it is ringing more bells than usual lately, and the cultural heritage has to be protected. The art and historical objects multi-million-dollar robbery is kind of a trend now, and let me be clear here: it is not a good one. But it is a fact that it’s becoming more and more frequent, and it goes from reporting missing highly valued medieval objects to generic ingots (metal collections), like in the French museum case.
What happened exactly and how they found out
During the night, the thief managed to access the Geology and Mineralogy Gallery, took the pieces, and left without activating any alarm. And that’s it, that’s how simple it was for them.
Then, when the cleaning team got to the museum in the morning, like any other morning to do their job, they realized some showcases were empty and got alarmed. That’s when the museum shut the gallery “until further notice” because they needed to protect what was left of it, check the protocols, and do an investigation.
They counted more than $640,000 in losses from the golden nuggets.
It sounded quite odd, just people getting in and taking stuff without ever being noticed by one of the most important museums in France, but when they talked about the cyberattack that happened just before, it all clicked. The attack had left the security system in critical condition. Alarms and cameras weren’t working as they should. And this was huge exposure and risk. (Point has been proven.)
But it’s more than “just another robbery”
This is not the only one that has happened in France; there was a similar case in another museum on September 4, where they stole some dishes from the 14th and 15th centuries and a wine glass from the 18th century, all of this worth over $6.9 million. So all of this points to a very serious structural problem in the security system.
The consequences of this type of robbery go beyond the “worth” of what’s being stolen; if it continues to happen, trust will go away, and the cultural heritage will be gone with it too. Why expose something so valuable if it’s going to get stolen? This is a dangerous question, because if they stop exposing, we lose access to history.
Protecting patrimony in this digital time
What happened in the National Museum of Natural History in Paris is a wake-up call: strong showcases and surveillance cameras are not enough. The system has to be unbreakable so a cyberattack cannot penetrate it. And if all is connected to one system, and when that system fails, everything fails with it, maybe it’s time to look for a second backup option.