A cyberattack on 14 July against Romania's National Agency for Cadastre and Land Registration (ANCPI), the body responsible for property records across the country, has frozen real estate transactions nationwide and exposed deep vulnerabilities in the country's public digital infrastructure. Stolen data, including employee login credentials and internal IT documents, appeared for sale on a hacking forum within a day of the breach, which ANCPI described as "the most serious technical incident in the institution's history." Cybersecurity experts note that despite managing one of Romania's most sensitive public databases, the agency allocated only around 305,000 euros — roughly 0.2 per cent of its 135 million euro digitalisation budget over two decades — to cybersecurity, a figure widely condemned as inadequate. The disruption has had immediate real-world consequences, with homebuyers unable to complete transactions before an August 1 VAT increase on new properties that will push costs significantly higher. Romania's interim Digitalisation Minister acknowledged that public institutions have digitalised in a fragmented manner without coherent national security standards, calling the incident a "wake-up call" for the entire public administration.