Romania restarts e-Terra cadastre system after month-long cyberattack outage

Cyberattack and outage

Romania's national cadastre and land registry platform e-Terra was taken offline by a cyberattack on July 14, according to Digi24 and ANCPI's own statement, though RFI cites the date as July 15. Attackers encrypted and deleted parts of ANCPI's IT infrastructure, making the e-Terra platform unavailable and disrupting cadastral operations, land registry updates, and property transactions across the country. RFI described the incident as the most extensive technical interruption in the institution's history. ANCPI stated that the integrity of the cadastre and land registry data is confirmed and that there is no evidence attackers accessed the data. Recovery work was conducted in coordination with DNSC, STS, and Cyberint, involving both infrastructure rebuilding and independent security testing. The system was migrated to the Government Cloud, which ANCPI described as offering superior technical conditions compared to the previous infrastructure. Work was extended beyond the initially estimated schedule for precautionary reasons, with operations interrupted at 03:00 and resumed the same morning.

Phased restart on August 11

The government announced that e-Terra was restarted in phases on Tuesday, August 11, 2026, at 15:00, initially for ANCPI staff, territorial cadastre offices (OCPI), and public notaries. The first day was dedicated to registering documents accumulated during the outage, including those received by mail and acts instrumentated by notaries during the period the system was unavailable. Land registry extracts for authentication and information could not be requested on the first day. From Wednesday, August 12, at 08:30, the system will become available to additional user categories: authorized cadastral surveyors, technical-judicial experts, and bailiffs who had access before the incident. User manuals and instructional videos were prepared for these users, and work sessions and training sessions were organized for OCPI staff. Other ANCPI online platforms remain down and will be restarted gradually with prior notice.

Backlog and request handling

Approximately 94,000 requests were in progress when the incident occurred. ANCPI extended legal deadlines through an internal decision, and available staff will be mobilized to recover delays. Requests submitted during the outage at counters, by mail, or by courier were registered with the exact date and time of receipt. Upon system restart, all requests, both those submitted by correspondence and acts instrumentated by notaries before the system was blocked but not yet registered at OCPI offices, are entered into the electronic register with mandatory preservation of their priority rank. The validity of already-issued land registry extracts was automatically extended by the number of days the system was unavailable, under ANCPI director general decision nr. 10 of August 4, 2026.

Notary access and early issues

The National Union of Public Notaries of Romania, led by president Laura Badiu, informed members on August 10 that e-Terra would become functional on August 11. Notaries were told they would receive a login link by email to access the application according to a guide communicated on August 7. However, according to G4Media sources, by 13:00 on August 11 notaries had not yet received the login links. A notary from Ialomița stated that neither they nor the territorial offices had logged in, waiting since 08:30. ANCPI warned that in the first days the system may run slowly due to high access volumes, and some PDF documents may be temporarily unavailable as they are still being transferred to the Government Cloud. The agency clarified that these documents were not lost or deleted.

Legislative response

President Nicușor Dan promulgated a law extending the reduced VAT rate of 9% for housing purchases until September 30, 2026, for buyers blocked by the ANCPI crisis. The measure applies to pre-contracts signed before July 31, 2025.