by Joseph P. Farrell, Giza Death Star:
You know me; I just cannot resist a story that points out the ridiculous vulnerability of digital systems, especially in this age when everyone like Larry-the-aptly-surnamed-Fink is crowing about the inevitability of artificial intelligence data centers and the glories of digital klepto-currencies and social credit systems. So when the following story popped into my email inbox, along with a quite intriguing scenario proposed by the person who found it and shared it, E.E., I had to sit up and pay attention. Sometimes the day’s running somersault off the end of the twig of the High Octane Speculation Tree and resulting nosedive into the floor of Speculation Canyon is not my own, and today’s gymnastic leap of speculation is entirely that of E.E. I’m just along for the ride because I happen to think that the speculation might be on to something:
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Hacker wipes European country’s entire land registry database, paralyzing real-estate market
If one were to rely only on the initial summary of what happened, one would get only this:
Key takeaways:
- A hacker deleted Romania’s entire land registry database after a failed extortion attempt, paralyzing the real-estate market
- The attack halted all property transactions, preventing notaries from authenticating sales or registering mortgages nationwide
- It appears, though, that Romania’s cadastre agency has had an offline copy of the wiped data
- Critics still point out that the perpetrator of the cyberattack had ample openings since the ANCPI hasn’t actually been investing much in cybersecurity.
Those points are not the end of the story of course. But before we continue with that story, just imagine if point three above were not true, and that Romania’s land registration agency had not preserved “an offline copy”, that is to say, actual hard copy of the data in the form of paper deeds, transfers, notarizations, and so on. Imagine, in other words, if Romania had been as stupid – and greedy – as the modern American AI companies that buy up hard copies of rare books, scan them, and then shred and pulp the hard copies. That imagination is, in part, the basis of E.E.’s high octane speculation.
But before we get to that, there’s more; did we mention that the strike vacuumed up all sorts of personal data, or that a similar strike had been conducted against Sweden?:
Hackers can get very angry when they don’t get their way. That’s what happened in Romania when a crook wiped the country’s entire land registry database after an unsuccessful extortion attempt. Poor cyber hygiene didn’t help, either.
First, the hacker breached Romania’s cadastre agency, the National Agency for Cadastre and Real Estate Advertising (ANCPI), posting on a hacking forum: “[RO] Thy arss shall be spanked, Romania! [ANCPI]”
“In addition to the data of Romanian citizens, from various databases collected through ANCPI networks, there is also a copy of the GitLab servers containing the source code of all their systems, such as Eterra, RENNS, as well as a version of my little ransomware program,” the announcement continued.
…
And since the extortion didn’t work, the hacker – who seems to have entered the database using valid credentials – deleted all data they had stolen, including internal documents, employee credentials, and, of course, land registry data.
The hack has brought Romania’s entire real-estate market to a standstill, Risky Business points out.
Notaries cannot record new transactions while citizens can’t obtain proof of ownership or detailed land records. And Romania is no small fish: on average, between 150,000 and 170,000 residential real estate units are sold annually across the country.
The hacker whose dark web account is called ByteToBreach and who also breached Sweden’s e-government portal earlier this year, has been doxxed.
