Bangladesh on High Cyber-Attack Alert as Bangladesh Bank Website Is Temporarily Taken Offline to Avert Risk

After two serious security vulnerabilities were detected in the PHP programming language, the main website of Bangladesh Bank has been kept temporarily offline to avert the risk of a cyber attack. The central bank's move, taken while the country remains on high cyber-attack alert, drew widespread attention on Thursday, October 22.

Bangladesh Bank said the step was taken as part of precautions being observed internationally. Technologists and engineers concerned are now reviewing the level of risk and working to bring the website back online as quickly as possible after ensuring its security.

A Bangladesh Bank official said on Thursday that this is not only Bangladesh Bank's problem; the website has been kept offline as part of precautionary steps being taken worldwide. It will be reopened once the risk analysis is complete.

Bangladesh Bank spokesman Arif Hossain Khan has also said this is not a problem unique to Bangladesh, but rather a precautionary measure being taken across the world.

According to the international news agency AFP, by exploiting this specific PHP flaw, cyber attackers can execute unauthorised commands on a server remotely without any password. As a result, there is a major risk that confidential files, databases and sensitive information on the server could be stolen or damaged.

Amid this concern, government institutions and digital services in several other countries, including France, the Netherlands and Belgium, have also been temporarily secured, it has been learned. In other words, multiple countries have taken similar precautionary measures to deal with the same technical risk.

Alongside central bank sources, it has also been learned that several banks whose websites are built on the PHP platform have kept those sites temporarily offline for security reasons. The alert is therefore not limited to the central bank alone; part of the banking sector has also been affected.

Officials of the government's Aspire to Innovate (a2i) project have, however, clarified that the roughly 36,500 government websites under the National Portal Framework are not built in PHP. As a result, they are not directly exposed to this specific risk.

Even so, a2i officials said the technical security of other government websites is also being examined as a safety measure. In other words, even where there is no direct risk, the security of government digital services overall is being checked as part of the wider precaution.

News of the high cyber-attack alert in the country has also been reported by other media outlets, which said some websites have been kept closed to avert the risk. This indicates the matter is not an isolated incident, but part of a coordinated precautionary response across the country.

Bangladesh Bank's website is an important official channel for information about the banking and financial sector. With it temporarily offline, users seeking related information have to wait, although the authorities say ensuring security is the main purpose of the decision.

The central bank says the website will be reopened as soon as the risk review is finished. Attention is now on how quickly the technologists complete their work and when other bank and government sites facing the same risk return to normal operation.