Online whisky sale targeted by cyber hackers
Rare spirits auction is halted
Cyber-criminals hacked a multi-million-pound whisky sale being held by Perth’s online spirits auction site.
The rare bottles were due to go under the virtual hammer of The Whisky Auctioneer Ltd, a company operating online sales internationally from Perth’s Inveralmond Industrial Estate.
Since starting in 2013, the company has held monthly auctions of highly collectable bottles.
The major sale ‘Mr Gooding’s Perfect Collection: Part Two’ offered bidders across the globe the chance to own bottles from “the largest and most unprecedented private whisky collection ever to be offered for public sale”.
The stock was owned by American collector Richard Gooding, whose grandfather began the Pespi Cola Bottling Company of Denver in 1936.
Mr Gooding had built up the collection over two decades before his death in 2014.
The first part of the sale, comprising 1900 bottles, fetched more than £3.2m earlier this year.
Bidding on the second tranche of the collection, another 1958 lots, was due to close at 7pm on April 20, 10 days after first going up for viewing online.
One of the world’s most soughtafter whiskies, the Macallan 1926 Fine and Rare 60-year-old, was expected to fetch more than £1m at the auction.
But Whisky Auctioneer informed customers this would be delayed by 48 hours due to
“abnormal excessive loads” on the website.
Later it explained its website had been targeted by hackers and the sale was postponed indefinitely. Whisky Auctioneer’s site was taken offline as a safety precaution.
A statement from the company’s founder Iain McClune, said it had experienced a “targeted, technologically sophisticated, sustained and malicious attack” on its website and databases on Monday, April 20.
He added: “As a precaution, we have been in touch with our valued customers who may have been impacted by this.
“The website is currently offline whilst we continue to actively investigate this.
“The auction of The Perfect Collection: Part Two has been postponed. We extend our apologies to those who are disappointed in the postponement of the auction and those who may be impacted by the attack.
“As a precaution, we’ve informed customers who could possibly be affected and we have outlined the immediate actions they should take in response to reduce any potential impact should personal data have been accessed. There is no evidence that bank or credit card details have been compromised at this stage.
“The team here is working extremely hard to investigate this and minimise the impacts on our valued customers as a result of this situation.”
No evidence that bank or credit card details have been compromised