Breakdown of Naš softver je narušen od strane zlonamjernih hakera.
biti
to be (sam, si, je)
od
from
naš
our
strana
side
Questions & Answers about Naš softver je narušen od strane zlonamjernih hakera.
Why does this sentence use od strane instead of just od to mean 'by'?
Both od and od strane (literally 'from the side of') are used with the Genitive case to show who did the action in a passive sentence. While od is shorter, od strane is very common in formal, technical, or journalistic Croatian, especially when the agent is a person or group (like hackers).
Why is the phrase for malicious hackers written as zlonamjernih hakera?
The phrase od strane always requires the noun and its adjectives to be in the Genitive case. Because there are multiple hackers, it takes the Genitive plural endings: -ih for the adjective (zlonamjernih) and -a for the masculine noun (hakera).
What exactly does the word narušen mean in this context?
It is the passive participle of the verb narušiti, which means to disrupt, damage, or violate. In IT and security contexts, it translates perfectly to 'compromised' or 'breached'. It has no special suffix here because it acts as an adjective matching the masculine singular subject, softver.
If strict grammarians often prefer avoiding od strane, how could we rewrite this sentence?
You would simply flip it into the active voice, making the hackers the subject: Zlonamjerni hakeri su narušili naš softver. The passive version is used here specifically to keep the focus on the software rather than the attackers.