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

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#221

Post by mhitza » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

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 than can only match a single business. The best example that comes to mind was when one county needed to buy busses (or vans) and the maximum length admitted was bellow the most common options, but as luck would have it a nephew of a cousing of someone with decision power (or something like that) just so happened to be the one importing cars that precisely matched the specs.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#222

Post by m0llusk » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

Seems like property ownership histories could be one of the few good applications of blockchain technology.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#223

Post by peder » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #111

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

"It's corruption and cronies" is a generic cop-out answer that doesn't explain anything. Like whenever someone gets caught in a compromising situation they say they "were hacked", as if saying that means anything.

And I think it's a label that's used freely on Hacker News against Eastern Europeans

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#224

Post by c7b » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

margalabargala wrote: post #212

c7b wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Disagree. We're talking real estate here. The time between transactions is months to years, not seconds to minutes. A git history will work fine. If there are racing transactions against the same piece of real estate, that's probably fraud, not something that should be automatically resolved.

git as-is is completely unfit for purpose and a huge security risk for this use case, because it uses MD5, which is no longer collision-resistant.

If your proposal is 'something like git, with a few modifications to make it suitable for this use case', then that's exactly what I'm proposing. What you will need, once you've considered all requirements to the best extent feasible, will be a blockchain. Eg you do need the ability to make protocol updates, no matter the time scale of transactions.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#225

Post by aa_is_op » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:35 PM UTC

martin_ky wrote: post #62

Squarex wrote: post #3

The same thing happened to Slovakia not that long ago.

The Slovak land register was hacked in January 2025. Hackers uknown encrypted the database, asking for an undisclosed 7-figure amount as ransom. The whole country's real estate market was paralyzed for about a month. It took couple of months to restore everything from backups and paper agenda and resume normal operation of the land register office. It was the largest cyber attack in Slovakia's history. The authoritie…

If I remember correctly, this is the hack that Fico tried to blame on Ukraine, even if the hackers were a known Russian ransomware crew that literally posted in their Telegrams about their support for Russia... right?

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#226

Post by tredre3 » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:35 PM UTC

anvuong wrote: post #160

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.

Happens far more often than you would think in developing countries.

Property lines disputes happen every single day in America, too. It's a universal thing.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#227

Post by tracker1 » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

Offline and pull based backups FTW... This is why I advocate for a pull or at least push/pull model for backups... where the remote system pulls backups out of your production environment, or otherwise from a drop point. Because a corrupt production system that controls backups can corrupt backups.

If your production system at most runs a backup to a drop site, then your backup facilities pull down versioned backups from there, you can better ensure older backup files are intact. More so by not allowing the two to see each other at all and not using backup accounts from a system that can access production resources.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#228

Post by mr_toad » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

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.

> since records began I guess

Possibly since 1086

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#229

Post by red-iron-pine » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:47 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #189

gchamonlive wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You’re going to need more than just a claim to prove that, and anyone who did purchase land likely has some evidence in support, even if it’s testimony from others.

e.g. if you made a big buy there ought to be records of a bank transfer, mortgage, etc.

"i paid for 30 acres here at $xx rate, and here is the mortgage docs from the bank dated March 19th that I signed, plus their valuation of the property and what went into it"

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#230

Post by alexpotato » Mon, Jul 20, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

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…

> 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 affidavits that you are who you say you are

- that begins the "paper trail" of evidence that allows you to start getting the rest of the document chain

- you rebuild from there.

If you're married, there is already a similar process for when a spouse takes the last name of the other spouse. The marriage certificate is the first step and then it goes from there for driver's license, passport, credit cards and so on.