Can You Guess the Louvre’s Surveillance System Password?
Up until last month, most of us would have assumed that — with its thousands of priceless works of art and historic artifacts — the Louvre had some top-notch security measures in place. Of course, that was before four people broke into the museum in broad daylight and nabbed the French crown jewels. In the aftermath of the heist, a lot of questions have been asked about how something like this could have happened.
Well, it seems like it might have actually been pretty easy. Since the heist, it’s become apparent that the Louvre’s security system is not quite as tight as we thought. On Wednesday, a museum employee told ABC that the password to access the Louvre’s video surveillance system was pretty easy to crack. I’ll give you a second to guess what it was. Are you ready? Okay. It was “Louvre.”
It seems like the Louvre has been struggling with cybersecurity issues for quite some time — a 2014 audit by a French infosec agency, which was recently obtained by French news outlet Libération, revealed it was using the same password — which, again, was “Louvre” — more than a decade before the heist, per CNN. It’s unclear if they ever changed it, but the employee who spoke to ABC said that was the password at the time of last month’s robbery.
To be clear, it doesn’t sound like the Louvre robbers tried hacking into the surveillance cameras to execute their heist (they went with the much more efficient “smashing windows” method). But it sounds like they — or you or I — probably could have if they tried for, like, ten seconds.
Hopefully, this will serve as a wakeup call to do more to protect the Louvre – and first things first, let’s get that password changed. Maybe “Louvre123” would be more secure?
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