Prothom Alo website gets ‘emergency warning’ from ‘well-wisher’ hacker

A hacker embedded an ‘emergency warning’ on the website of the Bangla daily newspaper Prothom Alo on Monday morning as a ‘well-wisher’ so that the news outlet could identify the security flaws in the website system.

The ‘emergency warning’ was posted on the website around 10:30 am and removed around 11:30 am, according to bdnews24.com.

In the 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.”