Romania's land registry crippled by cyberattack, halting property market

A cyberattack on Romania's National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration (ANCPI) has rendered the agency's digital services inoperable for nearly a week. The attacker accessed the system with stolen credentials, demanded a ransom, and after the extortion failed, deleted the central land‑registry database and source code.

All online cadastral services, including the e‑Terra platform, have been shut down, preventing notaries from issuing land‑registry extracts, certifying sales or registering mortgages. A notary quoted the impact: “I am a notary. Since Tuesday I cannot issue a land‑registry extract, certify sales or register a mortgage.” The outage has stalled thousands of property transactions just days before a scheduled VAT increase on new homes (from 9 % to 21 % on 1 August) and a July 31 tax rise, creating uncertainty for buyers and lenders.

Romanian authorities state that the core legal database was not compromised, and offline backups exist. The agency is migrating its applications to the government cloud, a process expected to finish mid‑week, after which system integrity will be verified. The director of ANCPI, Laurențiu Blaga, said the priority is “to protect data integrity and eliminate all identified vulnerabilities.” The National Directorate for Cyber Security (DNSC) confirmed the attack was financially motivated and exploited known software vulnerabilities. Restoration work continues, but the real‑estate market remains largely frozen.