Leak Of Citizens’ Info: Govt website didn’t have minimum security

The leak of sensitive personal information of millions of citizens from a government website was due to the weakness of the site, State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak said yesterday.

The data of as many as five crore citizens was exposed online from the Office of the Registrar General, Birth and Death Registration (BDRIS) website, this newspaper reported on Saturday.

Palak said, "The portal from which the information was made public did not have minimum security. Despite being warned, the officials of the department concerned did not take it into account. The state has suffered a great loss due to their negligence."

The leaked data, including names, birth dates, and National Identification (NID) numbers, was "easily accessible through a simple Google search".

"We have yet to find evidence that cybercriminals have taken any data. What we found was that there was a technical weakness in the government website. As a result, the information was very easy to see," the minister added.

Palak was speaking at the inauguration of the Bangabandhu International Cyber Security Awareness Award programme at the BCC Auditorium of ICT Tower in the capital's Agargaon yesterday.

Answering questions after the event, he told journalists that the state has suffered a great loss.

Palak however added that there was no scope to avoid responsibility for this incident.

The minister said, "We have announced 29 critical institutions, but the number is increasing step by step. After the cyberattack on Bangladesh Bank in 2016 when $81 million was stolen, we realised the importance of cyber security. Out of these 29 institutions, the institution which we identified in the list as number 27 fell into such a situation."

Meanwhile, after the exposed data came to the fore, the Election Commission began investigating 171 organisations working with them to verify whether any information has been leaked from their side, said NID Director General (DG) AKM Humayun Kabir yesterday during a press conference at the EC building.