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Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

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Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#121

Post by c7b »

codedokode wrote: post #100
c7b wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You need that anyway. It's not technology that's stopping notaries from falsifying transactions in the current system.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#122

Post by ninalanyon »

nicce wrote: post #26
skinfaxi wrote: post #5

> 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…

One more reason to to define the whole infrastructure in code and have offline backups. Recovering could be measured in hours.

A backup that isn't offline is not really a backup as it far too easy to destroy it even by accident/carelessness/lack of understanding.

When I was responsible for backups we kept the tape cartridges in a fire safe in a different building. We took a full backup weekly and moved the tape from the robot to the firesafe as soon as the backup was complete. Only the daily incremental backups stayed in the robot for more than a day.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#123

Post by Kinrany »

nashashmi wrote: post #94
skinfaxi wrote: post #5

> 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

Paper records burn great and are harder to store in multiple locations

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#124

Post by c7b »

margalabargala wrote: post #112
c7b wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can have decentralization without blockchain. A defining feature of blockchain is that each node depends on the precise ordering of prior nodes which is a huge liability if you have network disruptions, etc, in a bureaucracy. A git repo with cryptographically signed commits solves all the same problems without the headache.

Agreed that you don't need total ordering and hence consensus for pure asset transfers. But if you want to make any changes at all, like updating the list of nodes, you do. So in practice, you do need it. Every other proposal will fall short in a critical and avoidable way. Amending your git proposal with the necessary parts will turn it into a blockchain.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#125

Post by codedokode »

mschuster91 wrote: post #99
codedokode wrote: post #81

Earlier 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.

> 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, alth…

Blockchain is unnecessary complicated, for example, it has mining, rewards for those who add new records, even VM and scripts and all of these are not needed for a government registry. I do not need scripts within a land registry.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#126

Post by 21asdffdsa12 »

mindslight wrote: post #106
21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember the xerox-scandal years back, that invalidated officially scanned documents. You already life in a world where "scanned before" means you can legally challenge the validity of a document.

I am pretty sure I was bitten by this bug, or a similar bug, on an IRA transfer form that I uploaded to a bank. On the scan that I uploaded, one digit in the account number was a clean "5", but the customer service person said it looked like a good clean "6". I presume their document management system was an outcropping of a system originally set up for dealing with faxes, and used that or a similar compression algor…

Thus - one could assume that all transfers stored by the bank- before the update would not hold up in court.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#127

Post by cataphract »

gchamonlive wrote: post #96
_heimdall wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Don't know exactly on it works in Romania, but proving you purchased a patch of land is a different question -- for that you have the deed. You then submit the deed to the land registry. So this situation could at most result in the seller being able to sell the land more than once or disputes over the priority of sales over liens and other competing acts subject to registration.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#128

Post by fy20 »

nashashmi wrote: post #94
skinfaxi wrote: post #5

> 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

At least in my EU country, no the digital record is the primary.

When you buy property you get a deed for the land, but the details of a property can change after that. The deed also doesn't contain ownership, it just says what is on the land. It's common for land to have multiple owners (1/32 is not unheard of) due to inheritance.

I'm building a house, the land deed just has the land plot as we bought it, until the house is 100% finished (and registered) we will not get an updated deed, although the digital system has newer data (you need to register the construction progress).

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#129

Post by ifdefdebug »

wateralien wrote: post #58
subsaharancoder wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"you will own nothing and be happy"..no thank you!

Fair enough. But you do realize that all ownership is a made-up shared fiction that most people believe as real.

As long as trying to break that fiction has real-world consequences like jail time etc., it will work anyway.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#130

Post by pelagicAustral »

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #50

Imagine if the hacker was more clever and started writing plausible nonsense into the database, corrupting the backups.

This is Government, "plausible nonsense" is already being inserted into every single table on a daily basis.
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