For more than a month, citizens throughout Serbia have not been able to certify real estate sales contracts due to a cyber attack on the Ministry of Justice. The judicial information system is still not working, and the damage to the real estate market and legal certainty is increasing
Recent hacker attack on the Ministry of Justice made it impossible for citizens to certify their real estate purchase and sale contracts with public notaries. The ministry says it had to shut down the data center to avoid "unforeseen consequences".
The cyber attacks started on the 4th of July, so it is Ministry of Justice turned off the data entry in order to avoid the fate of the Republic Geodetic Institute or the Electric Industry of Serbia, which were also targets of hacking, writes Filip Rudić on the portal New Economy.
However, this has led to a standstill in certain actions to be carried out by judicial authorities, bailiffs and notaries public. In the case of the latter, a problem arose for citizens who want to buy real estate and for agencies that mediate in this business.
"I have a situation where the mortgage was paid, the clearance permit was certified, it was forwarded to the Cadastre, and we actually don't know where it was forwarded at all because the object was not given a number at all and was not registered in the Cadastre. It's a dead line, who knows where it goes," Blagica Kostić, owner of the Oznekretnine agency, tells Nova Ekonomija.
"A serious blow to each of us"
According to her, contracts are not certified for about a month.
"It is already a serious blow to each of us, mediators," said Kostic. As he says, at one point, notaries were certifying pre-contracts, but that has now been stopped.
The Chamber of Public Notaries of Serbia (JKS) told New Economy that "all notary public offices in Serbia work in regular mode, and perform so-called small certifications".
Jobs that require the use of the Judicial Information System have been postponed in order to protect the interests of the participants in those jobs and the level of legal certainty reached, JKS.Nekretnine stated.
"For the JKS, it is extremely important to ensure complete data protection before the Judicial Information System is put into full operation, when public notaries will be able to complete all previously postponed tasks," said the Chamber.
No response from the Ministry of Justice
The Ministry of Justice did not respond to New Economy's questions about when the system will be operational again.
At the end of July, the Ministry announced that "activities are underway to gradually return the system to full working mode", as well as that new centralized security solutions and the renewal of the hardware infrastructure are being planned.
However, the Ministry also stated that it would be "ungrateful and frivolous" to determine the exact date when the system will start working again, because "in this kind of business it is impossible".
"Given that in the last year several state bodies have been the target of hackers, that is, malicious attacks, there is an open suspicion that this is part of a hybrid war being waged against the Republic of Serbia," the Ministry of Justice said in a statement.
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