The websites of Bangladesh Bank, six commercial banks and the government’s land services portal remained inaccessible on Saturday as authorities took precautionary measures following a security vulnerability identified in PHP, a widely used programming language for website development.
The websites were found offline around 11am on Saturday as the institutions reviewed their technology infrastructure to guard against potential cyber threats.
Bangladesh Bank shut down its website on Thursday. Following the central bank’s move, six other banks also temporarily suspended access to their websites as a precaution.
The banks are Agrani Bank, Janata Bank, IFIC Bank, Standard Islami Bank, SBAC Bank and Bengal Commercial Bank.
The banks said the temporary shutdowns were intended to minimise potential cyber risks and assess the security of their systems. Their websites will be restored after the security reviews and necessary measures are completed.
Meanwhile, the Land Ministry has taken its digital land services website offline for maintenance in response to the PHP vulnerability.
According to a ministry announcement, the maintenance was scheduled to continue for 36 hours, from midnight on Thursday until noon on Saturday. During this period, users would not be able to access land services through land.gov.bd.
On 22 October, the government’s cyber security agency, BGD e-GOV CIRT, issued an urgent alert about the PHP security flaw.
The agency advised relevant organisations to identify PHP installations on their servers, check whether the versions in use were vulnerable and implement the necessary security measures.
PHP is widely used to develop websites and web applications.
Security vulnerabilities in the programming language can expose related software and servers to potential cyber threats, prompting organisations to review their systems and strengthen security measures.
