BB takes website offline over fears of cyber attack

Bangladesh Bank has taken its website offline as a precaution against potential global cyberattacks.

The move comes amid a five-day public holiday, central bank spokesperson and Executive Director Arief Hossain Khan told bdnews24.com on Thursday.

“The website has been taken offline as a security precaution following the emergence of global cyberattack risks,” he said.

The European Union's cybersecurity agency has advised temporarily shutting down vulnerable websites after identifying two severe security flaws in PHP, a widely used programming language.

The agency said to take this action if security updates cannot be applied quickly.

On Wednesday, the PHP development team announced emergency security updates and patches to resolve the vulnerabilities.

According to The Independent, growing concerns over the two flaws have already led several European government agencies to take their websites offline as a precautionary measure.

While the central bank has brought down its own website, other financial regulators -- including the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC), the Financial Institutions Division under the finance ministry, the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE), and the Insurance Development and Regulatory Authority (IDRA) -- have kept their websites operational.

The Bangladesh Government Computer Incident Response Team (BGD e-Gov CIRT) is the state agency responsible for issuing cybersecurity alerts.

On Thursday, the agency said two critical vulnerabilities have emerged in PHP systems, collectively named “PHP2Shell”. 

Exploiting these flaws, unauthorised individuals could breach the security systems of websites running on PHP technology. �"bdnews24