The headline, and the text that follows, is a machine translation of an article by Brice Le Borgne that appeared in Liberation on November 1, 2025:
“The museum’s security systems did not fail,” insisted Culture Minister Rachida Dati shortly after the spectacular burglary at the Louvre Museum on October 19. Ten days later, the tone had changed. On October 28, while maintaining that “the alarms worked,” she emphasized before the Senate that “security flaws did exist.” She intended to “shed full light on the failures, shortcomings, and responsibilities.” Three days later, she announced the first emergency measures to audit and address the security gaps. Is this rapid hardening of the stance due to what the Ministry discovered during its administrative inquiry into the Louvre’s security?
The scale of the IT failures, which have plagued the world’s leading museum for years, may have played a role. CheckNews has examined confidential documents and those published in the context of calls for tenders, revealing a long history of major cybersecurity vulnerabilities at the Louvre, about which the museum has been warned, but which have not all been patched.In mid-December 2014, three cybersecurity experts arrived. At the museum’s request, the French National Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI) came to conduct an audit of the IT systems, and more specifically, to test the security network. This network is where “the museum’s most critical protection and detection equipment is connected,” explains ANSSI, “such as access control, alarms, and video surveillance. An attacker who manages to take control of it would be able to facilitate damage or even theft of artworks.”
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