Bangladesh Bank restores website after two-and-a-half

Bangladesh Bank has restored its website at 8am today after keeping it offline for two-and-a-half days as a precaution against potential cyber threats following a global cybersecurity alert.

The website had been inaccessible since Thursday noon. Visitors were greeted with a notice stating that the service was undergoing scheduled maintenance and would be restored shortly.

Arief Hossain Khan, executive director and spokesperson of the central bank, confirmed that the website was back online at 8am on Sunday.

A day earlier, he had said the bank was monitoring the situation and had yet to restore the website to ensure its security.

He also said the connection between the central bank and commercial banks was operating smoothly.

“Our IT department is working on it,” he said at the time, without specifying when the website would be restored.

The central bank took the website offline on Thursday as a precaution after receiving the cybersecurity alert.

The move followed emergency measures taken worldwide after critical vulnerabilities were disclosed in PHP , a widely used programming language. Cybersecurity firms Calif and Wiz identified the flaws using artificial intelligence tools. Although patches were released, details of the vulnerabilities became public before the fixes could be fully applied.

Bangladesh Bank has faced major cybersecurity incidents in the past. In 2016, hackers diverted $101 million from its account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, prompting then governor Atiur Rahman to resign.

In 2023, the central bank shut down some internal web-based services for 36 hours as a precaution against a possible cyberattack.

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