Janata Bank website hit by cyberattack despite precautionary shutdown

State-owned Janata Bank’s website in Bangladesh has come under cyberattack despite being taken offline as a precaution, with the bank’s information technology team working to repair the damage, bdnews24 reported on Sunday.

Spam was found in at least two places on the website, preventing the bank from restoring public access on Sunday, and the site remained inaccessible as of 11:30am, while IT staff worked to fix the problems, according to bdnews24 and the Financial Express.

A senior official from the bank’s IT department told bdnews24 that the bank had found signs of two cyberattacks on its website. “We have found signs of two attacks on the website. It is taking time to fix them. Hopefully, it will be operational by the end of today,” the official said.

No comment could be obtained from the bank’s managing director because the position is vacant, bdnews24 reported. Janata Bank and Bangladesh Bank had taken their websites offline from Thursday as a precaution amid concerns over global cyberattacks, after the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity and affiliated organisations issued a joint alert on 21 October warning that two serious vulnerabilities in PHP, a widely used programming language, could let attackers execute malicious code remotely on affected servers. The agency advised temporarily disconnecting vulnerable web applications if security updates could not be applied promptly.

After a five-day holiday, Bangladesh Bank restored access to its website on Sunday, the first working day of the week, but Janata Bank was unable to bring its website back online, bdnews24 reported. The websites of other state-owned banks — Sonali, Agrani, Rupali and BASIC Bank — remained operational.