The government of Bangladesh takes down website leaking citizens’ personal data

The Bangladeshi government has taken down a website called the Office of the Registrar General, Birth, and Death Registration, which was found to be leaking personal information of around 50 million citizens. The data breach included sensitive details such as full names, phone numbers, email addresses, and national ID numbers. The government has stated that no hacking was involved, but citizens’ information was exposed due to the website’s vulnerability. Law enforcement agencies are currently investigating the incident.

On 27 June, Victor Markopoulos, a researcher from Bitcrack Cyber Security, found that millions of residents’ personal information had been disclosed on a Bangladeshi government website and informed the Bangladesh eGovernment Computer Incident Response Team (CERT). American online newspaper focusing on high-tech and startup companies, TechCrunch, confirmed the authenticity of the leaked data by using a portion of it to search through a public search tool on the affected government website. When they did this, the website displayed additional information from the leaked database, including the names of individuals who had applied for registration and, in some cases, even the names of their parents. TechCrunch conducted this verification process with ten different sets of data, and each time they received accurate information from the website.