Wired, a US-based tech magazine has alleged that the ‘personal information’ of Bangladeshi citizens has been leaked from a database associated with the National Telecommunications Monitoring Center (NTMC), which provides telecommunications monitoring and intelligence to national security. US-based cyber security consultant Jeremiah Flower reviewed the vulnerable Bangladeshi database and confirmed that it belonged to NTMC. However, they did not say how many people’s information has been breached.
Victor Markopoulos, a security researcher working with CloudDefense.AI, reported the information leak, according to the US-based tech magazine. The report claimed that the NTMC had left the personal information of citizens unprotected through an unsecured database linked to their system. Unknown hackers stole those data. Markopoulos told Wired that the database fell into the hands of hackers on November 12.
Wired reports that the leaked database contains more than 120 separate files. Some indexes contained hundreds of thousands of records. This includes citizen’s name, occupation, blood group, parent’s name, phone number, time spent on various phone calls, vehicle registration number, passport details and fingerprint image. It also contains the list of towers used by the mobile network and various information about the mobile phone network used.
Markopoulos, the main source of the report, told Wired that on November 8, he told the Bangladesh Computer Incident Response Team (CIRT), which works on cyber security that the information was in a vulnerable state. CIRT thanked him for receiving his message. In an e-mail message to Wired, CIRT also mentioned bringing the matter to the attention of the NTMC.
Wired found some of the shocking information to be true. However, some information seems experimental and incomplete to them. And security researcher Victor Markopoulos, however, said, “Although this information is not very sensitive, this should not happen.”
Wired reports that NTMC’s metadata is very robust. The database contained a wealth of information that answered the ‘who, what, how and when’ questions of citizen communication. Audio records of the telephone conversation were not found there. However, the duration of the talk and the possible caller’s number are mentioned there. These data are widely used to understand people’s communication and behavior.
