Art galleries and dealers appear to be targeted by cyber criminals with an email scam, fooling some organisations.

Attackers have broken into art dealers emails accounts and sent buyers duplicated invoices with changed bank account details.

According to the Art Newspaper, several galleries in London and the US have been affected.

Rosenfeld said to the Art Newspaper: “Around seven or eight hours after we had sent our invoice, the buyers got another email saying that the invoice we had sent out was in the wrong currency and that they should make payment to a different account.”

After agreeing on the sale of an artwork, The Rosenfeld Porcini gallery in London fell victim to a scam.

David Emm, Principal Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab, said: “Cyber criminals will take every opportunity to hijack online transactions for their own ends. So, it’s vital that we all take steps to reduce the ‘wiggle room’ available to them.

“Passwords are often our first line of defense when it comes to protecting online accounts, including e-mail accounts.  Unfortunately, we often cut corners and use weak, easy-to-guess passwords, or re-use the same password across multiple accounts.

An ideal password should be at least 15 characters long and consists of a mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols from the entire keyboard.

“If remembering passwords is too challenging, use a password manager application that will automatically handle all of this for you. In addition, you should set up two-factor authentication, especially where you use an account for financial transactions – and it never hurts to double-check the authenticity of an e-mail communication before handing over money,” added Emm.

Written by Leah Alger