Bangladesh Bank Website Back Online After Three-Day Closure
Bangladesh Bank's website is back online after remaining shut for three consecutive days. The central bank had suspended access to its website as a precautionary measure following a global cyber threat alert; after completing its security checks, the site has now been reopened to everyone.
Access to the website was suspended on Thursday, soon after a cybersecurity risk warning was issued internationally. For three straight days, visitors to the site were greeted with a maintenance message.
Bangladesh Bank's Executive Director and spokesperson Arif Hossain Khan had said at the time that the website would not be restored until complete security was ensured. No specific timeframe for reopening was given then.
The cyber scare began after a major flaw was detected in PHP, the widely used programming language. Cybersecurity firms Calif and Wiz had used artificial intelligence technology to identify the security vulnerabilities. After the government also issued an alert, the central bank took the precautionary step to protect its own website.
Banking operations, however, were never disrupted. The authorities had confirmed that the central bank's connectivity with commercial banks and overall transactions remained fully normal; the closure affected only the website itself.
The central bank's website is normally used to publish policies, circulars, statistics and other official information. With the site down for three days, banks, financial institutions, researchers and the general public had to wait for that information. Its restoration ends that wait.
Experts have long warned that as digital transactions grow, so does the risk of cyber attacks on the financial sector. This episode has brought that warning back into focus — the decision to keep the website closed for three days to strengthen security shows how seriously the central bank treated the threat.
With the site back online, the central bank's regular flow of information has returned to normal. At the same time, the incident stands as a practical reminder to every institution in the financial sector of how important it is to test their own systems for vulnerabilities and keep software up to date.
