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Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

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Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also physical markers in the ground at the corners of most properties. So if you had to, you could send a surveyor out to recertify boundaries. That would get very expensive quickly, however.

This is not true anywhere I've lived, and I'm curious where it is true.

Here in Sweden it seems to be true. Both houses I owned had the markers. I had an issue where the online map disagreed with the markers and found out they made a nice film to explain how to resolve problems regarding lot borders: https://www.lantmateriet.se/sv/kartor/vara-karttjanster/Visa...

They even show how they did historically which is super interesting!

Unfortunately changing the borders is super expensive and time consuming though so I didn’t do anything.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 agre…

fico is extremely against Ukraine and its president, and correspondingly extremely pro-russian to the point of being their lapdog. Their entire government is just a clownshow full or properly primitive incompetent people that make an average MAGA an elite intellectual in comparison, and openly racist/xenophobic extreme right wing bordering neo nazis types (I wonder why those types end up being traitors/collaborators…

Where "fico" refers to "Robert Fico", prime minister of Slovakia since 2023:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Fico>

Not to be confused with, say, Fair, Isaac, & Co., a credit-scoring company, or its eponymous FICO score (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FICO> and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FICO_score> respectively), an abbreviation for a FInancing COrporation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financing_Corporation>), or even a song by Cliipse and Stove God Cooks (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.I.C.O.>).

It wasn't immediately clear to me what (or who) "fico" (lowercased) referenced. Make your reader's job easier and be clear in what you're stating. Slovakian politicians of any standing may be less widely recognised internationally than you expect.

And yes, Wikipedia notes Mr. Fico's Kremlin-friendliness, which would cast doubts on his credibility in such matters.

Again: I've no particular reason to believe the account, hedged my own belief, and don't see much evidence for (or against) the accusation, though an early naked attribution of responsibility without any particular evidence isn't particularly convincing. Again my first reaction to the accusation was doubt, and I continue to harbour same.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#393
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…

I was just in Hungary and they attempted to return land seized by the communist government by basically asking around.

People would get their buddy to agree the land was theirs so not a perfect system, but some families were made more whole.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#394
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's even funnier is getting upset about people not wearing helmets the second you hear about an accident, with no idea whether people did or did not wear helmets. All the article says is that "the hacker entered using valid credentials." There's no information about how they got the credentials.

Victim blaming is a form of self soothing. If you can get yourself to believe they deserved it, then you avoid feeling that the world is dangerous and you might get hurt too.

There's victim-blaming, and there's gross incompetence.

My own problem with the top-level comment wasn't that it claimed fault on the part of the victims, it's that it didn't substantiate why that claim of fault was applicable in this case.

Multiple use of weak passwords in a critical system isn't acceptable in 2026 (nor has it been for many decades), and yet there's credible evidence (as my own follow-ups in this subthread and my own top-level comments should indicate) that the victims here did contribute significantly to their own harm. For that they should be found accountable. Hosting inherently insecure data systems is gross negligence, quite arguably criminal.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#395
post #38

An update from the land registry (the truthfulness of this remains to be seen depending on how fast this comes back online): ANCPI announced that it had begun migrating its applications to Romania’s Government Cloud. The operation is being coordinated by the Special Telecommunications Service (STS) and is expected to be completed on Wednesday, July 22. After the migration, authorized institutions will inspect the app…

My ex was late from work once a week because the company did commercial real estate logistics (sort of similar domain here) and she had the job of going to the secure data center and grabbing a backup disk out of the cage and transferring it to a safety deposit box. The dumb thing was the bank was two blocks from the data center and less than eight (six?) from the office so catastrophic events might have hit both or…

Yes, quite, this.

One of the lessons (and subsequent data integrition / continuity of business practices) learned from the 9/11 attacks in New York City, and destruction of both primary and secondary data stores of multiple entities (as well as several emergency-response agencies at various government levels from city to federal) was that essential data and operational roles need to be redundant across very widely-separated locations.

E.g.: from "Discussion note prepared by staffs of the Federal Reserve, the New York State Banking Department, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission, for discussion at a meeting on February 26, 2002 at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York":

[I]t was clear that business continuity planning had not fully taken into account the potential for wide-area disasters and for major loss or inaccessibility of critical staff. Contingency planning at many institutions generally focused on problems with a single building or system. Some firms arranged for their backup facilities to be in nearby buildings on the assumption that, for example, a fire might incapacitate or destroy a single facility. Very few planned for an emergency disrupting an entire business district, city, or region. As a result, some firms lost access to both their primary and backup facilities in the aftermath of the September 11 events, severely disrupting their operations.

"Summary of "Lessons Learned" from Events of September 11 and Implications for Business Continuity" February 13, 2002" https://www.sec.gov/divisions/marketreg/lessonslearned.htm>

Geographic distances were rarely considered prior to 9/11. Most companies were comfortable replicating data intercampus or to a facility within a few miles of a primary data center. A few firms, such as Nasdaq, actually replicated data out of state.

"9/11: Top lessons learned for disaster recovery" (Sep 9, 2011) https://www.computerworld.com/article/1545389/9-11-top-lesso...>

Also: "Hard-Earned Disaster Recovery Lessons From 9/11 and other disasters" (2025) https://backupcentral.com/hard-earned-disaster-recovery-less...>

Terrorist attacks, natural disasters, widespread power and other failures, etc., can all have impacts across many kilometres, possibly many hundreds. Redundancy equates to survivability here.

More broadly, information and data services are fundamentally about risk management and disaster response, as realised during 9/11 (as well as multiple earlier and subsequent incidents) in ways which weren't fully realised at the turn of the millennium. Or even today in some organisations.

Make backups. Test backups. Practice switchovers between primary and secondary (or multiple redundant) operations. And keep those resources and facilities widely separated.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason capitalism cannot work well is that it assumes endless resources and infinite growth, not because people don't like electronic transfers. Capitalism is failing in all countries and those that are not are already transitioning to some form or another or post consumerism.

Sure at the "end game" stage you are correct. But on the way to that stage it does what it does really well, meaning it makes lots more capital. De Soto is talking about why it "cannot" get started in a place without government controlled land registry.

Very interesting.

There appears to be a push to control open source software, in the guise of protecting children via age control.

With OSS, anybody can tweak the code on his device to pass the control, so the idea would be to only allow certified software. Which is expensive, and out of reach of most open source projects. Enter big, reliable companies that can afford the ticket for the certification of horrendous piles of slop.

see this recent HN post about it, I find it resonates, so to speak, with what you explain :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48960155

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#397
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just have Opsec.

I think there are very few hackers in the world who can hack a national government and not get identified, as the budgets and resources at the state level are enormous, and include ability to seek international help

There is no such thing as "the national government" when it comes to computer systems. They hacked one system of one government division.

If their Opsec wasn't crap it is extremely difficult to try to identify them after the fact.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also physical markers in the ground at the corners of most properties. So if you had to, you could send a surveyor out to recertify boundaries. That would get very expensive quickly, however.

This is not true anywhere I've lived, and I'm curious where it is true.

We have some in northeastern US. However they don't necessarily sit on plot boundaries; I get the impression that surveyors put them wherever it is most convenient for them to better triangulate the land. We found one in our front lawn somewhere near the road, it was a small concrete square that turned out to be a pillar sunk deep into the ground.

Re: Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

#399
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never forget this one video. A cyclist riding with a helmet on was doing everything proper -- helmeted, obeying traffic laws, riding in the proper part of the road... Then a city bus passes them far too close. The passenger side mirror of the bus catches the rider's helmet and speeds off...carrying the cyclist off of their bike and dangling by their helmet at speed...

Freak accidents occur everywhere. Helmets save a lot more lives then causee deaths overall.

Yep, same with seatbelts... a lot of broken ribs, etc. and people complaining.

If you crashed so hard, the belt broke your ribs, without the seatbelt, you'd be dead right now, head first through the windshield. I mean sure, you wouldn't be complaining about broken ribs, but yeah...

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