Bangladesh Bank website shut down to prevent cyberattacks

The official website of Bangladesh Bank has been kept offline due to concerns over a possible cyber-attack.

However, internet banking and mobile banking transactions are functioning normally, so customers are not facing any issues with their transactions.

Regarding this, Bangladesh Bank spokesperson Arif Hossain Khan told Prothom Alo on Thursday night that the website is being checked for any faults.

This decision was made due to concerns about worldwide attacks. There are no problems for customers in their transactions as a result.

Currently, the internet and software are extremely important for delivering government services, banking, e-commerce, media, and various online platforms.

A significant portion of these websites relies on the PHP programming language. Recently, after two critical security flaws were identified in PHP, there has been global concern about cyber security.

According to BBC and Reuters reports, after two critical security flaws were found in PHP, a widely used programming language for developing and managing websites, various governments have taken emergency actions.

Following the news of the flaws, governments and commercial enterprises worldwide have shut down their websites since Wednesday night. Despite this, there have been millions of hacking attempts reported.

Using artificial intelligence (AI), a researcher has discovered two highly dangerous flaws in a programming language called PHP.

This programming language has been used in nearly 70 per cent of websites around the world.

BBC's cyber affairs correspondent, Joe Tidy, said that this is an unprecedented situation where IT teams have been scrambling to protect their organisations from a highly serious cyber attack risk, resulting in one website after another going offline.

For example, the Edinburgh Council website, the ''Doctor Who'' section of the BBC website, and websites of various companies in Japan, Belgium, and the Netherlands have been taken offline.

Even some cyber security authorities have taken their own websites offline although they were the ones trying to alert the public about its importance.

As a precaution to avoid potential risks of global cyber attacks, Bangladesh Bank has kept its website offline.