Cyberattack paralyzes Romania's land registry and property market
A cyberattack on the Romanian land registry authority has destroyed the database and its backups and brought the property market to a standstill. Notaries can no longer certify contracts. Stolen data was offered for sale.
A severe cyberattack has paralyzed the Romanian land registry authority ANCPI and its e-Terra platform. As the Berliner Zeitung and Balkan Insight report, the attacker gained access via stolen credentials and, after a failed extortion attempt, deleted the database and backups. As a result, the property market ground to a halt because notaries and citizens could no longer retrieve entries or certify contracts. The specialist portal The Record frames the case as a financially motivated attack that exploited known security gaps that should have been closed. Stolen data was offered for sale in a hacker forum. In the assessment of Balkan Insight, the incident reveals considerable gaps in the IT security of state institutions. In Germany it raises the question of how secure domestic registries are against similar attacks. How quickly the authority can fully restore operations is open.