Romania's cadastre system e‑Terra crippled by massive cyberattack

The National Agency for Cadastre and Real Estate Publicity (ANCPI) confirmed a large‑scale cyberattack that rendered the e‑Terra cadastral platform and the agency’s email services unavailable. The agency said the data it manages remain secure, but a hacker known as “ByteToBreach” claimed to have exfiltrated personal records and source code, offering them for sale and threatening to delete backups. Romanian authorities – DNSC, SRI and STS – are investigating the incident.

The outage halts all cadastral‑related operations: notaries cannot issue title extracts, banks cannot process mortgage approvals, and land‑registry requests are stalled. The disruption comes just before the 31 July deadline for buyers to benefit from a reduced 9 % VAT on residential property, raising concerns that thousands could be forced to pay the standard 21 % rate. Real‑estate agents report postponed contracts and uncertainty for foreign buyers.

A related breach affected the Ministry of Investments and European Projects’ private‑beneficiary procurement app, though officials said the PNRR projects were not impacted. The broader cyber‑incidents are being treated as hostile activities linked to Russian‑controlled groups, according to the Romanian Foreign Ministry.