Administrația Națională „Apele Române” Breach Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (APE1766599000)

In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Administrația Națională „Apele Române” breach identified under incident ID APE1766599000.

The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Administrația Națională „Apele Române”'s information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/apele-romane, the number of followers: 108, the industry type: Government Administration and the number of employees: 55 employees

After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 763 and after the incident was 637 with a difference of -126 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.

In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on Administrația Națională „Apele Române” and their customers.

On 24 December 2025, Apele Române disclosed ransomware issues under the banner "Ransomware Attack on Romanian National Water Administration".

Authorities in Romania confirmed a severe ransomware attack on the national water administration ‘Apele Române’, encrypting around 1,000 IT systems across most regional water basin offices.

The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting 1000 IT systems (email, databases, servers, workstations).

In response, and began remediation that includes Restoring systems.

The case underscores how Ongoing, teams are taking away lessons such as Ransomware groups increasingly target essential utilities, making resilience and identity controls a strategic priority. Water infrastructure is now being included in the state cyber protection framework.

Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.

The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.

Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Valid Accounts (T1078) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating attack encrypted 1,000 IT systems across regional offices and Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating large-scale ransomware attack on national water administration. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified Command and Scripting Interpreter (T1059) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating attackers used Microsoft BitLocker tool to lock files. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware encrypted ~1,000 IT systems using BitLocker. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Execution Guardrails (T1480) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating operational technology remained unaffected despite IT disruption and Indicator Removal (T1070) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating attackers used legitimate BitLocker tool for encryption. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol (T1048) with lower confidence (40%), supported by evidence indicating ransom note demanded contact within seven days (possible exfiltration threat). These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.