Panel formed to investigate citizens' data leak: Palak

The ICT Division today formed a committee to investigate the incident of leaking sensitive personal information of millions of Bangladeshi citizens from the website of a government organisation.

ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak shared the information with journalists after holding an emergency meeting with the representatives of the 29 critical information infrastructures at ICT Tower.

The committee will be headed by the Director General of the Digital Security Agency and it will submit the investigation report within the next seven days.

Besides, a standing committee will be constituted which will regularly monitor cyber incidents.

The state minister's comment comes after reports that a security exploit in a Bangladeshi government website has resulted in the exposure of sensitive personal information belonging to millions of Bangladeshi citizens on the internet.

The leaked data includes names, birth dates, and national identification numbers of over 50 million users which is allegedly easily accessible through a simple Google search.

TechCrunch initially reported the breach, which was discovered on June 27 by Viktor Markopoulos, a researcher from Bitcrack Cyber Security, a computer security solutions firm based in South Africa.