The website of Bangladesh Bank (BB) remained offline on Friday, a day after the central bank took it down following a global cyber security alert.
The site has been inaccessible since yesterday noon.
Arief Hossain Khan, executive director and spokesperson of the central bank informed the media about observing the situation and said “we want to ensure full security, which is why we have not restored the website.”
He said the connection between the central bank and commercial banks was running smoothly. The BB took the site down yesterday as a precaution after receiving the alert. The site was still down till the filing of this report at 7:30pm.
The move mirrors emergency steps taken worldwide after critical flaws were disclosed in PHP, a widely used programming language.
Cybersecurity firms Calif and Wiz uncovered the flaws using artificial intelligence tools. Patches were released, but details became public before the fixes could be fully applied.
The central bank has faced cyber incidents before. 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 BB shut some internal web-based services for 36 hours as a precaution against a possible cyberattack.