Land Registry hacked

A cyberattack that disrupted property transactions across Romania has prompted fresh warnings about the resilience of digital property systems as the UK modernises the homebuying process.

The Conveyancing Task Force (CTF) issued an urgent statement following the attack, saying the incident underlines the importance of strong cybersecurity, governance and contingency planning as digital property transactions become more widespread.

The attack took systems operated by Romania’s National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration offline, including its national land registration platform, e-Terra.

As a result, notaries were temporarily unable to verify property sales or register mortgages, while new applications were suspended and existing cases delayed.

Romanian authorities said core land ownership and mortgage databases were not compromised and that backup copies were stored across multiple locations. Reports that the entire database had been deleted have not been verified.

The CTF said the incident serves as a reminder that digital transformation must be accompanied by robust safeguards to maintain confidence in property transactions and protect critical infrastructure.

The CTF offered the following statement:

1. A dishonest narrative has captured the homebuying roadmap

The government’s recent homebuying roadmap reveals the extent to which an overpowerful law‑tech sector has persuaded policymakers to accept a fundamentally dishonest narrative, that the primary cause of delays in homebuying is a lack of digitalisation. This claim has been repeated so often that it has begun to sound like fact, despite having no grounding in the lived reality of property lawyers.

Two groups with strong links to the law-tech sector have even manufactured the now-infamous myth that conveyancing involves “300 documents” or “300 steps,” a fiction designed to justify a second myth: that homebuying is “highly fragmented” and therefore must be handed over to proprietary digital platforms. These arguments were always questionable and now appear faintly absurd.

2. Reality has intervened

Over the past few days, reports have emerged that Romania’s national land registry has been hacked, and its property market frozen. This follows the catastrophic attack on Slovakia’s land registry in 2025.

Over‑centralised digital land registration systems are becoming prime targets for international cybercriminals, with consequences that are deeply destabilising.

These events show that the greatest risk to modern land registration and the integrity of property law in the U.K. is not insufficient digitalisation, but uncritical digitalisation driven by powerful commercial interests rather than sound constitutional or legal principles.

3. The legal profession is being asked to accept an absurd and dangerous proposition

The legal profession is being asked via the ‘Roadmap’ to accept an absurd proposition. That it should be compelled by law, with constitutional questions about professional independence brushed aside, to practise property law inside an increasingly dangerous ‘Digital Wild West’. Worse still, when cybercrime strikes, it will not be the law‑tech sellers who bear the cost. Their opaque terms of business ensure that liability flows away from them and directly onto the profession and the public. The very actors promoting this dystopian, digital future have insulated themselves contractually from its legal consequences.

A clear warning

The UK is being steered towards a flawed model in which constitutional infrastructure is treated as a commercial experiment. The CTF cannot endorse a reform agenda built on manufactured myths, commercial lobbying, and systems that expose the public, the profession, and the property market to escalating cyber risk.

The Conveyancing Task Force calls on ministers to reassess the constitutional, legal, and consumer‑protection principles at the centre of homebuying reform. The stakes are national, and the warnings are already written in the failures of other countries’ systems.

You cannot amazonise UK property law.