Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database • Hacker News Board

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#361

Post by RandomLensman » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:34 AM UTC

AndroTux wrote: post #312

RandomLensman wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all the same thing - what equipment do you need to read hieroglyphs on top of understanding the language (which goes for digital, too)? If you have the paper and understand the language, that's it. We already can see that accessing old digital data isn't necessarily easy if it wasn't always kept on/converted to current media and formats (will we keep that up for millenia)? And both storage can be broken, needi…

For the third time: IF you take care of the data, it’s fine in both cases. If you neglect your beloved book for 70 years and store it under a bridge, it’s going to be completely useless as well. The key part is the taking care of your medium.

The taking care of the book for 70y does not involve recreating the book over and over again to keep it readable or keeping a reading machine in working condition (or be able to recreate it). It's an entirely different level of care.

If the medium isn't destroyed, it is directly readable if it's a book, but not necessarily so in digital because hardware and software is needed - just taking care of the original medium isn't enough in digital over centuries.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#362

Post by rcbdev » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:35 AM UTC

iepathos wrote: post #265

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…

Do the people who sign sworn affidavits already have to have proven identities? If so, then they're unable to recover from a situation where they lost everyone's identity.

In Austria, there is the concept of "Amtsbekanntheit", meaning if the government officer knows you, that's also valid proof of identity.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#363

Post by 6LLvveMx2koXfwn » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 5:52 AM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #341

halJordan wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"why's he asking for a new dl? " "Oh volcano exploded, his home is under 5 ft of ash." "Gotcha, mail him the copy"

Fun fact: If your house is under 5 ft of ash, it's not covered by volcano insurance. That only covers you if your home is destroyed by the actual eruption/explosion. What you need is "pyroclastic event" insurance to cover you for ash and lahar. / It cost something like $15/year when I lived in Seattle. // The macOS spell checker doesn't know "lahar."

This basically covers the financial model of the whole insurance industry;

    - get insurance to cover you for X
    - get hit by X
    - realise you actually got hit by Y after reading the policy small print (or you really did get hit by X, but your policy only covers you for Y)

Getting something like Volcano Insurance requires some specific foresight, I would be slapping myself on the back if my house was covered in volcanic ash right up to the point when I got on the phone to my insurance company to make a claim.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#364

Post by jandrewrogers » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 6:18 AM UTC

alexpotato wrote: post #230

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…

> 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…

It depends on the country. The US has the ability to do the equivalent of deep "duck typing" with almost no documentation even if you've been off the grid in the developing world for a long time. This is a case where the intelligence apparatus works in your favor. They can know you are a US citizen with high probability absent obvious evidence of such.

Of course, if you fall into a crack that is beyond their reach you will almost certainly have a more difficult time. For a variety of historical reasons, there has been relatively little reliable documentation of American citizenship so the system adapted to that reality.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#365

Post by lbschenkel » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 6:44 AM UTC

nutjob2 wrote: post #185

ajb wrote: post #171

The UK used to have a distributed system - everyone had to have a solicitor store "deeds" of their property, which were a sort of paper blockchain of all the transactions the land had been in since - I don't know, since records began I guess. Since we got a centralised land registry cheaper solicitors have binned these, but some properties still have them as a historical record.

Not sure what you mean by 'binned'. In some Common Law jurisdictions the deed document represents the property and whoever psychically holds of the deed controls the property. Any centralized recording system merely records the last known status of the deed and additional information such as the nominal owner, mortgage holders, etc.

Not sure if by "centralised recording" you are referring to the UK way or how it is implemented in general (civil law) but I can say that in Brazil the registry definitely does not have only the last deed.

In Brazil the books are append-only, they have the whole history of thay piece of land since records began. If it was a bigger plot that was dismembered, it is there too. When ownership changes you have to register the contract/terms of transfer/sale separately in a different process, but that does not change legal ownership and you still must go to the registry and register that registered transfer/sale in the registry, and the paperwork you get is a new certificate of registration which is a new snapshot of the books and includes that whole history from the very beginning. There is no copy or certificate you can can get from the land registry without including that whole history.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#366

Post by johanvts » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 6:53 AM UTC

alexpotato wrote: post #230

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…

> 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…

In my country (and I think by now most non-US developed countries do something similar) everybody has a CPR(CentralPersonRegistry) number that identifies you, you need it to do almost everything so you aren't likely to forget (its your birthday + 4 digits). You get it at birth or if you come to the country for more than 3 months, it legally mandatory and it's also legally required to inform the government if you change your address. Also, if you (ever) had a modern passport there is already a database with your fingerprints, face and iris scan in it.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#367

Post by 21asdffdsa12 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:09 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #153

21asdffdsa12 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't know what you mean by "hold up in court". This seems to be an instance of software engineers making sweeping prognostications about legal matters. "Hold up in court" as in was it duly executed and filed by a certain date, regardless of the time and extra management required for the bank's performance? Yes, why not. "Hold up in court" against someone claiming it was an unauthorized transfer? Even without the b…

The specific argument could be that the sum entered was falsified by the process digitalizing. And any checksum that would have caught that- would be computed after scanning.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#368

Post by MagicMoonlight » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 7:57 AM UTC

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…

[dead]

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#369

Post by 21asdffdsa12 » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 8:15 AM UTC

pelagicAustral wrote: post #130

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.

You know- that this sentiment, this "decomplexify" society at all cost, because the monetary burden of taxes steals my lifeblood has produced several catastrophes in the past?

Pol Pots Khemer Rouge come to mind. The "abandon free trade lets go full bio" of the Lebensraum was in the same spirit.

Arguing against all societal complexity is asking for a genocide, how unpersonal and not hate-driven it seems on the surface level.

Your sentiment makes sense on a "We deserve a optimal ratio of taxes vs outcome" solution.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#370

Post by soco » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 8:30 AM UTC

inigyou wrote: post #70

dmos62 wrote: post #65

Earlier 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.

Sometimes it can happen that the honest company gets a visit from the dedicated contract crony, with the offer to do the real work for like 50% of the contract value. At least the taxpayers get something usable - if that 50% amounts to something usable.