Reposted from the Toronto Star

It’s almost the stuff of comedy: A man wearing a dark jacket, pulled high to mask his face, slips unperturbed into an empty gallery, lifts a $45,000 Banksy print from the wall and strides almost casually out the same door he came in.

There was nothing urgent about the early-Sunday-morning theft, and why would there be? If not for the security cameras, it would have been the perfect crime, and not for any particular skill by the thief. Bright lights, an unlocked door and not another soul to be seen made “The Art of Banksy” — displaying some $35 million worth of the British street artist’s work on Toronto’s Sterling Road — about as forbidding as an all-night bus station.

Of course, bus-station standards are hardly sufficient for an art exhibition, said Steven Keller, a museum security expert based in Florida.

“Art exhibition security is somewhat unique in that instead of putting the valuable assets in a safe at night, we hang them on walls,” said Keller, whose Architect’s Security Group is the largest museum security consulting group in North America, and has worked with Toronto’s Aga Khan Museum. “Therefore, the building they are displayed in has to be well protected. Every access or egress point should have been staffed or alarmed, someone leaving with a picture should have been seen, and the item they were carrying examined.”

“If they left by a fire exit door, they should have been observed by CCTV and an alarm generated,” he added. “Someone should have been close enough by to respond. Obviously, none of this happened.”

Keller, who watched the now-famous security footage online, said such out-in-the-open displays of valuable material require alarm systems that “far exceed” the needs of virtually all other kinds of facilities. His security company, he says, “provides CCTV which is monitored and not just recorded, which apparently wasn’t the case in the Toronto Banksy theft, where no one intervened when they should have.”

This is the question of the moment: How could so much valuable art be left unmanned, unobserved and, apparently, unlocked? Toronto Police Services doesn’t appear to have gotten that far with its investigation. (An officer at the communications branch said he had “no idea” what was being investigated; the lead investigator on the case is off duty until next week, the communications desk said.)

Meanwhile, LiveNation and Starvox, the event-promotion companies that brought the show to town, haven’t had much to say either — a brief statement Thursday simply noted that the artwork, a print called Trolley Hunters valued at $45,000, “went missing during setup.” They’ve declined further comment, though they confirmed through a spokesperson that 213 Sterling Rd. did have at least one security guard on duty at the time.

The theft occurred at 5 a.m. on Sunday, three days before the opening of the blockbuster exhibition. Toronto police released the surveillance footage on Thursday. And so far, the thief remains as anonymous as the artist whose work he ripped off. 

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Reposted from Artnet.com

The cost could be more than $132 million, if "the Mac" is reconstructed after a second fire leaves the historic building a ruin.

Fire fighters have fought a blaze for the second time in four years at the Glasgow School of Art’s historic Mackintosh building. This time the destruction is far worse: construction experts fear that the shell of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s landmark building will have to be torn down as much of it is in danger of collapse. To rebuild “the Mac,” as it is known, could cost at least £100 million ($132 million), the Scotsman newspaper reports, “or double that,” according to Bill Hare, a professor of construction management at Glasgow Caledonian University.

The devastating fire broke out late on Friday night at the Scottish art school. Around 120 firefighters tackled the blaze, which has left the building a smoldering ruin. The fire spread with rapid intensity, damaging the Campus nightclub next door as well as the O2 ABC music venue. There were no casualties. The First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, visited the site and called the fire “heartbreaking.” She is reported to have said that the Scottish Government is ready to “do anything we reasonably can to help ensure that the building has a future.”

The fire in the art school started just as a £35 million ($46 million) project to restore the Art Nouveau building was nearing completion after a fire had destroyed the school’s Mackintosh-designed library in 2014. A sprinkler system was being installed as part of the restoration work. The 2014 fire was started accidentally by an art student’s project, when gases from a foam canister were inadvertently ignited. The cause of the second fire is being investigated.

One of the oldest art schools in the UK, Glasgow’s alumni include Douglas Gordon, Simon Starling, and Jenny Saville. It has produced eight Turner prize nominees and two winners: Gordon and Starling. There has been an outpouring of empathy from the art world in response to the fire. Scottish painter and former alumni Alison Watt took to Twitter among many other notable graduates. “My heart is breaking,” she wrote. “I just can’t watch the footage of Glasgow School of Art in flames. I feel physical pain. It’s unbearable…”

In 2014, the US architect Steven Holl completed a new building for Glasgow’s celebrated art school. Known as the Reid, it is across the street from “the Mack,” and escaped damage by the weekend’s fire.

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Reposted from the Evening Standard

A £1 million painting stolen six years ago has been returned to its owners after it was discovered under a drug dealer's bed.

The work, by Sir Stanley Spencer and titled Cookham from Englefield, was taken from the Stanley Spencer Gallery, Berkshire, in 2012.

Its whereabouts remained a mystery until police arrested Harry Fisher, 28, in June last year after finding a kilogram of cocaine and £30,000 in cash in his Mercedes.

Officers discovered the artwork under a bed next to three kilograms of cocaine and 15,000 ecstasy tablets when they searched his flat in Kingston-upon-Thames, west London.

A further raid on his family home in Fulham found more Class A drugs, making a total street value of £450,000, and £40,000 in cash.

Fisher was jailed for eight years and eight months at Kingston Crown Court in October, having pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply Class A drugs, acquiring criminal property and handling stolen goods, Scotland Yard said.

His passenger at the time of arrest, Zak Lal, 32, of Rochester, Kent, was jailed for five years and eight months after admitting conspiracy to supply Class A drugs, acquiring criminal property and possession of an offensive weapon, police said.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said the painting's owners, who were "devastated" at the loss, were finally reunited with the artwork last month.

Arts Minister Michael Ellis said: "Spencer is one our most renowned painters and a true great of the 20th century. It is wonderful that this story has had a happy ending and the painting has been returned to its rightful owners."

Detective Constable Sophie Hayes, of the Metropolitan Police's art and antiques unit, said: "The art and antiques unit was delighted to assist with the recovery and return of this important painting.

"The circumstances of its recovery underline the links between cultural heritage crime and wider criminality.

"The fact that the painting was stolen five years before it was recovered did not hinder a prosecution for handling stolen goods, demonstrating the Met will pursue these matters wherever possible, no matter how much time has elapsed."

Described by the Stanley Spencer Gallery gallery as one of "our greatest British artists", Sir Stanley often used the Berkshire village of Cookham as inspiration for his work during a 45-year career.

He died in 1959.

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Reposted from WAVE3 News

After a three alarm fire on Wednesday, clean up crews continued to repair damage at the Kentucky Center on Thursday.

The main issue inside of the building was water damage in the lobby, according to Kentucky Center spokesman Christian Adelberg.

Kim Baker, President of the Center, says the theaters were not affected like the lobby, just some water seeped under the doors. 

It's the water damage in the lobby that has caused some concern over the $18 million worth of art located there.

Adelberg said the pieces were already covered to protect them during the ceiling work.

Baker says the only piece they are worried about is the “The Coloured Gates of Louisville” by John Chamberlain. The piece took on some extensive water damage on the wall of the Bomhard theater. To protect the rest of the art from fluctuating temperatures as the building dries out, the center enlisted the help of the Speed Art Museum.

Most of the performances scheduled for this weekend have been relocated. 

Right now, the box office is closed to the public but tickets still available online.

The Broadway hit musical, Waitress, was scheduled for June 26. Broadway Louisville tweeted the show should go on as planned.

It is unknown when the center will be open again. 

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Reposted from CNBC

A cyberattack of devastating proportions is not a matter of if, but when, numerous security experts believe.

And the scale of it, one information security specialist said this week, will be such that it will have its own name — like Pearl Harbor or 9/11.

"The more I speak to people, the more they think that the next Pearl Harbor is going to be a cyberattack," cybersecurity executive and professional hacker Tarah Wheeler told a panel audience during the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) annual forum in Paris.

"I think that the most horrifying cybersecurity attack is going to have its own name and I think it's going to involve something more terrifying than we've thought of yet."

Wheeler is CEO and principal security advisor at Red Queen Technologies, a cybersecurity fellow at Washington, D.C.-based think tank New America, and former cybersecurity czar at multinational software firm Symantec.

Explaining her premonition, Wheeler pointed to vital health and transport infrastructure she described as grossly under-protected.

"I think about the fact that most American healthcare technology is secured, if at all, with ancient, crumbling security infrastructure. I think of planes full of people, the kind of infrastructure that protects flu vaccinations. I think about fertility clinics losing years' worth of viable embryos," she said, stressing that people are not paying attention to that crumbling infrastructure.

Critical infrastructure and industry

Wheeler is not alone in her apocalyptic outlook. Not a single report from technology companies and researchers in this field claims that the cyberthreat environment is becoming less hostile or less significant.

The World Economic Forum's (WEF) Global Risks Report 2018 names cyberattacks and cyber warfare as a top cause of disruption in the next five years, coming only after natural disasters and extreme weather events.

"In a worst-case scenario, attackers could trigger a breakdown in the systems that keep societies functioning," the report said. Industry and critical infrastructure like power grids and water purification systems could be potential targets for hackers, whether they are small groups or state actors.

Retired Admiral James Stavridis, who served as NATO Supreme Allied Commander for Europe, echoed these warnings in a prior interview with CNBC: "We're headed toward a cyber Pearl Harbor, and it is going to come at either the grid or the financial sector... we need to think about this cyberattack as a pandemic."

Artificial intelligence-focused security firm BluVector reported in February that almost 40 percent of all industrial control systems and critical infrastructure faced a cyberattack at some point in the second half of 2017.

Unpatchable devices and the internet of things

Companies and governments aren't doing enough to protect these systems, Wheeler said.

"The inevitability is based in the easy access to the kinds of exploits that still work 10, 15, 20 years after they've been revealed," she said, noting that there are still companies running critical infrastructure, including health infrastructure, on Windows XP and other platforms that are unpatchable — meaning they can't be updated for vulnerability and bug fixes. Many internet of things (IOT) devices, she described, are unpatchable by design.

IOT, which has been described as "merging physical and virtual worlds, creating smart environments" through devices connected to the internet and that communicate with one another, represents a whole new level of vulnerabilities.

And cybercriminals have an exponentially increasing number of potential targets, the WEF report said, "because the use of cloud services continues to accelerate and the internet of things is expected to expand from an estimated 8.4 billion devices in 2017 to a projected 20.4 billion in 2020."

The chief executive of defense firm Raytheon International, John Harris, recently called cyberattacks the "single biggest threat to global security," adding that "the more we are connected, the more we are vulnerable."

Listen to the hackers

But Wheeler didn't specify who would likely be behind such acts, stressing that the nature of cyber warfare is asymmetric — and while there are state actors with hostile intentions, cyber weapons are accessible to just about anyone with the skills to deploy them.

What's needed, Wheeler stressed, is "sensible, deep, not broad, cybersecurity regulation that has teeth." She urged the private sector to listen to its "early warning system" — what she called the information security community, or hackers — rather than criminalizing their activity.

Industry experts have encouraged best practices and a greater awareness of the threats across the public and private sectors, and call on both sides to improve collaboration.

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Reposted from ArtNet

London’s Hayward Gallery has been forced to close on the opening day of a major solo show dedicated to the South Korean artist Lee Bul. One of her works caught fire yesterday, forcing the private view of the exhibition “Lee Bul: Crashing,” to be called off. 

“During an incident yesterday, an artwork caught fire in a contained space within the Hayward Gallery which required attendance from the fire brigade,” a spokesperson for the gallery confirmed to artnet News.

The artist and the museum decided together to remove the artist’s work Majestic Splendor (1991–97) from the exhibition for safety purposes ahead of the opening, but a small fire broke out during the de-installation. While the press preview yesterday morning went ahead, the evening opening was canceled at the last minute. 

This isn’t the first time the work, which comprises a fish decked out in sequins, has caused trouble. The smell of Majestic Splendor made visitors to Bul’s 1997 show at the Museum of Modern Art so nauseous that it had to be removed. To avoid the same problem, the fish have since been placed in a sealed plastic bag with the chemical potassium permanganate. But the presence of the chemical increased the chances that other already flammable materials would catch fire.

“Superficial damage was sustained in a confined section of Gallery 1,” the spokesperson said, explaining that the gallery will remain closed today and tomorrow to deal with “remedial cosmetic work.” Staff anticipate reopening on Friday, June 1, to inaugurate the show, which will run through Hayward’s 50th anniversary in July and close August 19.

One security contractor was assessed for the effects of smoke inhalation as a precaution in the wake of the blaze, the spokesperson said.

The Hayward reopened its space in London’s Southbank Centre at the end of January after a two-year closure for refurbishment. For its latest show, Lee has taken over the gallery’s expansive space with more than 100 works spanning the late ‘80s to the present. The show includes installation, painting, and performance, transforming the space into a futuristic landscape replete with alien bodies, cyborgs and Kusama-like mirrored environments.

The artist’s work recalls everything from science fiction stories to Korea’s own quickfire urban development and presents an environment teetering on the edge dystopia. Indeed, the fire broke out among a number of depicted disaster experiences that include a monumental foil Zeppelin, Willing To Be Vulnerable – Metalized Balloon (2015–16), that references the 1937 Hindenburg disaster, and a new sculptural work, Scale of Tongue (2017–18), which references the sinking of the Sewol Ferry in 2014, an event that left 304 people dead.

Lee received an honorable mention at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999 for her contributions to the Korean Pavilion and Harald Szeemann’s international exhibition. She later received the Noon Award for established artists making experimental work at the 10th Gwangju Biennale in 2014.

“Lee Bul: Crashing” is on at London’s Hayward Gallery from May 30 through August 19.

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Reposted from CSO.com

Employees generally want to protect data against compromise but few understand the sensitivity of their data or the role of anything but passwords in protecting it, according to a new study that highlighted the difficulties that over-optimistic CSOs have in building an active security culture.

Although 64 percent of employees use company-approved personal devices for work, a recent Clutch survey found, just 40 percent of employees faced regulations on their use of personal devices – highlighting the continuing exposure of companies to common but problematic bring your own device (BYOD) policies.

High BYOD use was often translating into unintentional security exposure from otherwise “normal” activities such as the use or exchange of documents, the survey found. This ease of access meant that employees often didn’t think about the risks inherent in those activities – compromising their ability to recognize when data is sensitive.

“We've seen that at many companies, employees believe that information that needs to be protected is special, sensitive stuff that's explicitly marked, and most of the everyday communications they receive and send aren't a risk for their organizations,” said PreVeil CEO Randy Battat in a statement upon the survey’s launch.

“The reality is that the majority of communications, and the majority of an organization's intellectual capital, can be found in the ‘ordinary’ email or shared file.”

Passwords not the be-all and end-all

Compounding the problems created by ease of access to potentially sensitive information was the risk of employees’ limited security practices.

Most employees understand the importance of passwords as the primary level of protection of company data: 76 percent reported using password protection techniques, although just 67 percent said their company regularly reminded them to update their passwords.

“It’s likely that some employees are subject to password restrictions or guidelines but are simply unaware of it,” the report’s authors noted. “So, even if they use password protection, they may not be doing so according to policy.”

This gap had led to lower levels of compliance than many employees would even be aware of – yet the discrepancy between actual and best practices was glaring.

Use of security tools was one glaring example: a previous Clutch survey for example, found that while 84 percent of corporate cybersecurity policies involve the use of specialized security software, just 48 percent of employees are regularly reminded to install that software – and just 44 percent actually do so.

This level of non-compliance has been a bugbear for CSOs that often assume their employees are as actively concerned about lower-level security measures and policies as they are.

Yet just 59 percent of employees saying they had competed formal security or security-policy training.

“The gap between how decision-makers design policy and how employees enact it underscores the importance of effectively communicating cybersecurity policy to employees,” the report notes.

“Lack of policy recognition and policy are essentially the same in the context of cybersecurity. That is, if a company’s employees don’t realize a policy is present, it is essentially non-existent.

Fixing this issue – which has become even more important in a NDB and GDPR-driven compliance environment hobbled by companies’ chronic inability to identify their data – may require CSOs to more strictly monitor and impose use of mobile device management (MDM) tools capable of forcing updates of security tools, password changes, and other elements of security policy.

“If you’re allowing access to a device that is going to be used at work, whether owned by the employee or the corporation, you also set up an environment where the IT organisation can specify which applications can be installed on that device,” ManageEngine director of product management Rajesh Ganesan recently told CSO Australia.

Low usage of security tools was compromising essential activities such as patch management – which has been “a little bit haphazard”, Ganesan said – but taking a more proactive stance was helping bring devices under control.

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Reposted from BBC News

A teenager has been found guilty of plotting a terror attack on the British Museum in London with Britain's first all-woman cell.

Safaa Boular, 18, of Vauxhall, London, has become Britain's youngest convicted female Islamic State terrorist.

A jury at the Old Bailey found her guilty of two offences of preparation of terrorism acts.

She was also found guilty over an earlier attempt to travel to Syria for terrorism.

Boular was accused of planning to travel to Syria to join IS militants and later preparing to carry out a terrorist attack in London after her fiancé, an Islamic State fighter, died.

Her sister Rizlaine 22, of Clerkenwell, London, has already admitted planning a knife attack on London and their mother Mina Dich, 44, has pleaded guilty to assisting her.

Boular will be sentenced in around six weeks time.

During her trial, the court heard how Boular - then 17 - plotted a gun and grenade attack at the British Museum.

The sisters and Dich discussed their plans using Alice in Wonderland coded language, with Rizlaine as the Mad Hatter.

Aged 16, Boular was radicalized online in the wake of the 2015 Paris terror attacks.

She met IS fighter Naweed Hussain on Instagram and after three months of chatting, she declared her love for him with an online marriage ceremony.

The court heard how she had wanted to join Hussain in Syria, but her plan was thwarted when British security services became involved and confiscated her passport.

Boular told the police about Hussain and security services deployed officers to pose as fellow extremists and speak to the pair online.

On 4 April 2017, it was a security services officer, posing as an IS commander, who told Boular that Hussain had been killed in a drone attack.

The prosecution claimed this only strengthened her determination to carry out an attack in the UK.

Boular went on to tell officers posing as extremists about plans for an attack and on 12 April, she was charged with preparing terrorist acts in Syria.

Despite being in custody, Boular continued to talk to her sister and mother about an Alice in Wonderland-themed tea party - code for an attack.

In one call Boular complained: "Mate, you guys are partying without me."

Rizlaine and Dich carried out reconnaissance of major landmarks in Westminster and bought knives and a rucksack, the court heard.

They were arrested on 27 April, the date of the planned attack, along with friend, Khawla Barghouthi.

Counter-terrorism coordinator Dean Haydon said social services were called in to act back in 2016.

"As a family unit, they are pretty dysfunctional. There was a major safeguarding issue we had to manage. It did involve social services, local authorities, schools, education and family courts trying to safeguard the wider family," he said.

"But despite all that activity it was quite clear Safaa was still continuing with her attack plans."

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Reposted from OKCFox News

It's not exactly a break-in at the Louvre, but police at the University of Oklahoma are searching for a campus art thief.

Police released photos of the suspect carrying a painting out of the Fred Jones School of Art around 2 p.m. on May 14th. Investigators say the suspect is believed to have stolen two paintings from the second floor of the building, and a third from the fourth floor.

Surveillance video caught the suspect in the act, but they have not been identified.

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Reposted from NY Daily News

A rogue in a Russian art gallery was arrested after he "seriously damaged" a priceless painting of Ivan the Terrible.

Igor Podporin was at the State Tretyakov Museum in Moscow just before closing Friday evening when he picked up a security pole and bashed the protective glass around the painting "Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan".

The 19th century work by Ilya Repin — a visually arresting large-scale canvas depicting the medieval tsar clutching the son he mortally wounded — had been "seriously damaged," Tretyakov officials said in a statement.

It added that the painting had been punctured in three places around the figure of the son, but that the most valuable part of the work —the faces of the pair — was left intact.

Podporin, a 37-year-old from the city of Voronezh, was arrested and appeared later on a Russian police video where he acknowledged lashing out against a painting that is considered a part of Russian history.

He said that he went to the museum specifically to look at the masterpiece and drank 100 grams — roughly three shots — of vodka before his outburst, adding that he doesn't normally drink vodka and was "taken over" by something.

Igor Podporin admitted to damaging the painting. (Russian Interior Ministry)

He faces a vandalism case and up to three years in prison, according to state media.

Repin's painting has been moved to the Tretaykov's restoration workshop.

It is not the first time that the work has been attacked, and that the artist repaired it himself after a religious icon painter attacked it with a knife in 1913.

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