NID server temporarily closed

National Identity Card (NID) server service of Election Commission (EC) will remain closed till 5 pm on Wednesday (August 16). As the NID server is closed, many banks and service institutions are also closed to provide related services.

The Election Commission has confirmed that the service is temporarily closed for some maintenance work. Election Commission Additional Secretary Ashok Kumar Debnath told the media that a technical team is working on the NID server to assess the risk of cyberattack. The server is down for now. Will resume by afternoon.

According to sources, the EC servers were shut down on Monday (August 14) evening. As a result, the general officials of the EC could not enter the server and database on Tuesday (August 15). Only members of the Technical Committee have the access for necessary monitoring.

It is reported that information has been leaked from the websites of 25 public and private organizations in the country due to cyberattacks by Indian hackers. Among the most affected institutions are Investment Corporation of Bangladesh, ICB and Directorate General of Health Services, DGHS. The National Identity Card (NID) server was shut down to survive the attack.

The hacking of the Website of Investment Corporation of Bangladesh, ICB is significant as the cyberattack contains information of about 10,000 investors and investment applicants. It contains names, addresses and bank accounts of investors in government mutual funds. And the leaked DGHS data includes revenue collection figures from government hospitals. Indian hackers claim that they have captured the data of 40 thousand records of Bangladesh Bank. The hackers also leaked some information from the Land Ministry's land tax portal.