‘Well-wisher' hacks Prothom Alo website, posts 'warning'

A warning was posted at the top of the Bangla version of the site for about an hour before it was taken down

The website for Bangla daily newspaper Prothom Alo has been hacked.

The hacker, who identified themselves as a ‘well-wisher’ of the media outlet, embedded an ‘emergency warning’ on the top of the Bangla version of the newspaper’s home page around 10:30am on Monday.

The message was eventually removed around 11:30am.

In their message, the hacker claimed the hack was only an attempt to highlight ‘security concerns’ for the widely read publication’s website.

The message read:

“Dear Matiur Rahman Sir and the staff of Prothom Alo,

First of all, I want to make it clear that I am not your enemy, nor do I have any intention to harm any property owned by Prothom Alo, the most-read and trusted Bengali newspaper in the country.

However, there are significant security flaws in the content management system (CMS) developed by Quintype Technologies India Limited, which is used by your website to broadcast news online.

By exploiting these, any motivated person or organisation can change, modify, or alter any news which has been previously published by Prothom Alo to spread rumours among the general public by taking advantage of its credibility.

Therefore, I am writing this message to warn you. I am willing to present the details of all these security flaws to your technical department and executive officers and help fix them quickly through united efforts. I ask you to contact me at [email protected].

In conclusion,

A well-wisher of Prothom Alo”

Asked about the issue, Prothom Alo’s Head of Online News Management Shawkat Hossain Masum said: “I would not call it a hack as we could post stories and they could be read. But the IT team is working on it. Details will be available at a later time.”