Louvre heist: security flaws go unaddressed for over ten years
A year after the €88 million theft at the Louvre Museum in October 2025, Le Figaro reveals that alerts about security gaps dated back more than ten years. Experts had warned in 2014 that the system could be compromised remotely.
Warning signs ignored at the Louvre
On a Sunday morning in October 2025, a criminal gang breached the Louvre's security system using a service lift and gained access to the Apollon gallery. The perpetrators left with a haul estimated at approximately €88 million, carrying off notably the Crown jewels, which remain missing to this day.
According to Le Figaro, the documented problems at the Parisian museum go back much further. In 2014, experts from the National Agency for Information Systems Security (ANSSI) had already identified a critical vulnerability: the security system could be compromised remotely, from nothing more than a simple computer. These technical alerts apparently failed to trigger substantial reforms within the institution currently run by Christophe Leribault.
The timeline reconstructed by the daily newspaper reveals that the Louvre's management sometimes relegated security concerns to the background. Although the museum remains the world's most visited institution, protective measures against sophisticated burglaries were not adapted to match the level of risks that had been flagged for a decade.
The theft has been dubbed the "heist of the century" by the national and international press. The investigation remains ongoing as authorities seek to trace the path of the stolen objects and identify all members of the criminal cell responsible for the operation.
Source: Le Figaro