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.
Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
171–180 of 440 posts
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#172[flagged]
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#173The same thing happened to Slovakia not that long ago.
Accounts at the time: "1T+ in assets are frozen as Slovakia's Land Registry faces ransomware attack" https://spectator.sme.sk/politics-and-society/c/news-digest-... > (9 Jan 2025) HN discussion (1 comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42650343 > "Ransomware Attack Paralyzes Slovakian Land Registry, Souring Slovakia-Ukraine Relations" https://dailysecurityreview.com/security-spotlight/slovakian... > (January…
> Apparently tied to Ukraine in this case.
Lord no! That accusation doesn't pass the sniff test.
Try looking further east for the real culprits.
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Faxes and photocopiers have existed for nearly a century
A photocopy isn't a primary record!
OK but the primary record itself is not the primary record when challenged in court; subject to a change order; redefined by legislation or handled in many other ways. There is money involved.
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Restored from very old backups and paper documents.
"Very old" could mean that they were not up to date. What did they do when the backups didn't match the actual situation at the time of the breach?
The involved parties and the notaries keep copies of every transaction.
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Accounts at the time: "1T+ in assets are frozen as Slovakia's Land Registry faces ransomware attack" https://spectator.sme.sk/politics-and-society/c/news-digest-... > (9 Jan 2025) HN discussion (1 comment): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42650343 > "Ransomware Attack Paralyzes Slovakian Land Registry, Souring Slovakia-Ukraine Relations" https://dailysecurityreview.com/security-spotlight/slovakian... > (January…
> Apparently tied to Ukraine in this case. Lord no! That accusation doesn't pass the sniff test. Try looking further east for the real culprits.
Ukraine was specifically mentioned in two of the articles I'd referenced, though not in the one originally submitted to HN. I was dubious finding it once, hedged with "apparently" based on the 2nd. I did look for a Wikipedia article on the event which might have included a more substantive and reflective post mortem but didn't find one.
If you've specific information clearing or establishing the link, post it. I agree that hasty accusations are risky. The main point I was looking to establish was that the source wasn't indicated as Algerian, as with the Romanian incident.
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#177Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#178Earlier 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.
A blockchain solves the problem of consensus under Byzantine faults. Payments are an incidental use case, and not even a good one because managing payments including avoiding double spending can be achieved with a weaker primitive than consensus.
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Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#179Earlier 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
Only if you bought between the backup date and today
(And obviously has some doc to prove it)
Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database
#180Amateurs. Everybody knows you should never wipe databases. You should install a cronjob that makes a random, unrecoverable change on a regular (but random) basis.
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