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Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

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Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#301

Post by markdown »

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…

A land title is written on paper or cardboard, with signatures and stamps on it.

The digital copy is just that; a digital copy.

The hacker would have to destroy the database and all backups, and also burn down the building holding the registry.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#302

Post by markdown »

franciscop wrote: post #139
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…

This happened in a 50k people town where my father is from in 1982 with a BIG flood that destroyed the town land registry documents (among a lot of the town). Since he's a lawyer, had first hand experience and I was always curious I asked many things about this a while back. Basically, what happened is that they rebuilt it from proof of ownership and testimonies of the people. You can never get to 100% recovery like…

In my country, titles are always issued in duplicate. The land registry gets one of these originals, and the landowner the other. Just about every landowner has their original on their person, or held by a bank if it's mortgaged.

So all is not lost if the registry goes up in flames.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#303

Post by ggm »

Under the Australian Torrens title system, paper is no longer authoritative and if you bring a deceased estate title document to the registry they keep it after updating the titles registry database, unless you ask to get it back and it's stamped to mark it superseded. I know because I've done this journey.

3 2 1 people.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#305

Post by markdown »

SteveGerencser wrote: post #200
franciscop wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened in a 50k people town where my father is from in 1982 with a BIG flood that destroyed the town land registry documents (among a lot of the town). Since he's a lawyer, had first hand experience and I was always curious I asked many things about this a while back. Basically, what happened is that they rebuilt it from proof of ownership and testimonies of the people. You can never get to 100% recovery like…

Not saying that this is the only reason, but it is a big reason why we have a land survey of our property on hand on paper and stored online. If something ever happened to the registry, we could at least establish our claim to our land.

Don't you have a land title, which of course is more evidence than a survey which anyone can pay for and get?

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#306

Post by markdown »

gowld wrote: post #284
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…

In the US, real estate purchases come with "title insurance", because there is no official, guaranteed, land registry database.

wtf

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#307

Post by userulluipeste »

iso1631 wrote: post #218
ExoticPearTree wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was worried about the societal implications of being unable to prove land ownership but it seems that may be avoided. You know, it's not like people would come and steal your land overnight because you can't provide proof of ownership.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg15ev0347o

"Under normal circumstances, property law in England and Wales dictates the original owner cannot claim their property back even if the title change was made fraudulently."

That's... a curious thing to have in the body of laws. What's its purpose and who does it serve?

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#308

Post by rzerowan »

Tangentially reminds me of what happened to the South Korean gov data center [1] where a no-backup ~900TB data center got erased due to a battery fire.

Withno external backups piecing together all the lost functions must havebeen hair raising, and more forensic archeolgy than data recovery.

Last i heard i think they had restored a quarter of the lost services/data.

[1] https://www.intermediagroup.org/south-korea-data-loss/

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#309

Post by akudha »

mhitza wrote: post #221
alexpotato wrote: post #37

Romanian friends have told me that this is really due to corruption. Specifically: - government gives IT/data contracts to cronies - cronies don't actually do any real security work to protect the data - things like this happen

As a Romanian I can tell you that most of the corruption happens through "dedicated contracts", or outright syphoning. In this case I expect an underpaid employee, and at most an incompetent nephew of someone. They had no reason to have an .authorized_keys file in the webroot of the website, and yet they did. If you want to know what "dedicated contracts" look like in practice they are overly specific requirements th…

If it is any consolation, this kind of corruption exists in many countries. I don’t know how to fix this, but corruption always finds creative ways.

Here is one I learned recently - govt started issuing birth certificates online. Hopefully Less corruption, right? Officials made deliberate spelling mistakes in names etc, because you have to go in person for corrections. In person means bribe, which means back to same situation as before (almost)

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#310

Post by tomaskafka »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #234
alexpotato wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically, what happened is that they rebuilt it from proof of ownership and testimonies of the people In a similar vein, I was once curious how you would prove your identity if ALL of your relevant documents (passport, driver's license, birth certificate etc) were lost in some kind of cataclysm e.g. a house fire pre-digital etc Turns out there is actually a mechanism for this: - get multiple people to sign sworn a…

Fun fact, if you're unlucky enough to replace your Social Security card 10 times, they will no longer issue them to you anymore. It is a lifetime limit, and they fan it out to 3 per year. Oddly enough, if you legally change your name, they will send you a new one regardless of the limit.

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