Was hoping it was a political act in favor of land reform or against owning property.
Romania already tried communism. The people did not love it.
Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
91–100 of 440 posts
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they deleted the blockchain db from the nodes, this is still lost. Blockchain doesn't have anything esp. to do with data loss. It solves exactly one problem which is distributed double spending in accounting ledgers.
I suppose the idea could be that you have several different institutions holding the same data, which they know is valid because of the Blockchain.
No. Blockchain is made for managing transactions between untrusted parties. In case with a land, there is an authority managing the registry, so a standard relational DB (with optional digital signatures) is the bets option. Why someone wants to use a tool, not good for a specific purpose, for that exact purpose?
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#93arte.tv released a documentary about measuring and registering land just a month ago @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl7AfiJs5Gk (Romania: The Unmeasured Land | ARTE.tv Documentary)
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#94> Since the hack, officials restored their website and posted a message announcing they are rebuilding the agency's entire network from scratch. Even if the hacker claims they deleted backups, the agency appears to have had an offline copy, otherwise things would have gotten really messy over the coming months in Romania. So it seems not all has been lost. I was worried about the societal implications of being unable…
Has not digital data always been a secondary source of information, instead of a primary source of information? Paper records cannot be thrown away. And new records are probably recorded digital only but a copy is sent to the parties in the transaction
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
So that 50% attack results in someone taking all the land? No thanks. It is a poor idea to use blockchain for government registries. If you want transparency, simply publish signed daily updates and that's enough. Just use simple DB with backups, and optionally, a printer printing changes on a paper.
2/3 attack. Read up on BFT.
It doesn't matter, it's a dumb idea anyway because there is a central authority managing the land registry and there is no need for anyone else to be involved.
Also, SQL database is much more convenient to use, it has query language and indices unlike a blockchain.
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd bet money the offline copy is far from up-to-date, given the state of the network. It still has potential to be mayhem
If its at least somewhat recent hopefully those affected still have paperwork for any property ownership transfers. Finding proof of property you bought decades ago would be a huge pain.
The problem is that everything will potentially be under dispute, since anyone can claim they purchased a patch of land whose registry was missed in the restoration
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same thing is rampant in other Eastern European countries as well. Tips on how to address this for those of us that are publicly minded?
I'd say form an IT firm and bid on government contracts and do honest work, but we all know how that goes in reality. Honest workers don't get the contracts. You can still try, though.
I'm sure it's obvious to anyone living in a corrupt/oppressive regime, but in case it's not obvious to everyone.
Corruption and oppression are signaling and coordination problems. The illegitimate sovereign is exploiting informational assymmetry: they know your neighbors are just as angry as you, they know it because all the walls have ears.
They need to prevent you and your neighbors all knowing it at the same time. Your best play is to find some signal, something difficult to censure, hard for the goons to pick out in a crowd but legible to your neighbors. If you all knew that the first guy to shove back when the cop shoves you is going to be followed by a swarm of guys? Very easy to find the first guy in that case.
This is why shit like extremely high gas prices scares the shit out of illegitimate sovereigns: they're the ones posting pure data about why everyone should be that angry right now.
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#98Enterprise storage arrays have immutable snapshot functionality that makes ransomware easy to recover from.
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#99[flagged]
So that 50% attack results in someone taking all the land? No thanks. It is a poor idea to use blockchain for government registries. If you want transparency, simply publish signed daily updates and that's enough. Just use simple DB with backups, and optionally, a printer printing changes on a paper.
> It is a poor idea to use blockchain for government registries. If you want transparency, simply publish signed daily updates and that's enough.
A blockchain is essentially that, just with the daily update that's being signed also including the signature and hash of the previous day.
Blockchain as a technology is actually useful here. It does not mean automatically that blocks have to be mined by third parties, although pseudocurrencies have gone that route for decentralization reasons.
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> A blockchain is the logical extreme of where you end up when you think about how to sync backups It's not. Blockchains are only eventually consistent among nodes. They're designed for synced backups among adversarial peers. There's no reason for a government agency to use one internally. There are better ways to sync backups when the people with access to make updates are also authorized to do so.
Internally, you don't need it, agreed. But that is centralization risk exemplified in this incident. Which isn't necessary. Every notary could be a node. It would be a lot more resilient, and it would look a lot like a blockchain (not necessarily with a crypto currency though) if you do it properly.
If every notary is a node, you need some mechanism to ensure they perform only legitimate transactions and constantly monitor them. It is easier to just have a central authority.