A hacker has breached Romania's cadastre agency and wiped the country's entire land registry database following a failed extortion attempt [1]. The hack has brought Romania's entire real-estate market to a standstill as official apps and websites have been offline for a week [2]. Notaries can't record new transactions while citizens can't obtain proof of ownership or detailed land records. Email servers at the National Agency for Cadastre and Real Estate Advertising (ANCPI) were also down as part of the incident.
The stolen data was posted online by an account with the name ByteToBreach, a known hacker who also breached Sweden's e-government portal this year, and many other government agencies and high-profile companies over the past year [3]. Romania joins Poland, Slovakia, Greece, Morocco, Russia, and Ukraine as countries that had their land registry agencies hacked over the past three years [4]. The incident has significant implications for the real-estate market, with potential risks and costs for citizens, businesses, and the government. The use of valid credentials to enter the system and the mapping of internal systems before wiping them and backups highlights the sophistication of the attack [5].
