Hacker wipes Romania's land registry database

A hacker breached Romania's cadastre agency and deleted the country's entire land registry database after a failed extortion attempt, bringing the real-estate market to a standstill for a week. The attacker, identified as Zakaria Mahdjoub from Algeria, gained access using valid credentials, mapped internal systems, and wiped both data and backups before posting stolen employee credentials and network details on a hacking forum. The agency has since restored its website and is rebuilding its entire network from scratch, though an offline backup prevented a more severe long-term crisis.