A cyberattack has disrupted Romania’s digital land registry systems, as reported by the National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration (ANCPI). The agency confirmed that while the attack did not compromise its core technical and legal databases, it has rendered services offline for nearly a week, halting real estate transactions nationwide. The agency is now migrating its applications to the Romanian government cloud, with restoration efforts expected to conclude soon. This incident highlights vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure and the ongoing threat posed by cybercriminals.
Details of the Cyberattack
Last week, ANCPI described the incident as “the most serious technical incident in the institution’s history,” which disabled its central IT infrastructure, including the e-Terra cadastral and land registry platform. The outage has affected online land registry services, official email systems, and applications used by notaries and legal professionals, preventing the registration of new property transactions and processing of existing requests.
Investigation and Attribution
Dan Cimpean, director of Romania’s National Directorate for Cyber Security (DNSC), indicated that the attack appeared financially motivated, exploiting known software vulnerabilities that had been flagged for patching. Investigators found no evidence of stolen personal data or land registry certificates, although some user credentials and application source code were allegedly exfiltrated.
A threat actor known as ByteToBreach claimed responsibility for the attack, offering what it claimed were stolen ANCPI data for sale on an underground forum. Romanian authorities suspect ByteToBreach operates as an initial access broker targeting poorly protected systems for financial gain, rather than being state-sponsored. Investigators believe the actor may be based in Algeria.
Impact on Real Estate Transactions
The disruption comes at a critical time, as Romania is set to increase the value-added tax on new homes from 9% to 21%. This change is expected to delay transactions that many buyers and developers aimed to complete before the tax hike. The fully digital nature of the cadastral and land registry system means that authorities are currently unable to register new property transactions or issue necessary land registry extracts for home sales and mortgage registrations.
For further details, refer to the report by The Record.
