Bangladesh govt websites riddled with casino, betting page advertisements: report
dismislab claimed to have uncovered 3,295 betting web pages hosted on at least 11 government websites, all actively promoting four major betting platforms
The websites of the Bangladesh government are riddled with the promotion of online betting platforms, revealed a recent research by dismislab, an independent online verification and media research platform.
In an article published yesterday (2 June), dismislab claimed to have uncovered 3,295 betting web pages hosted on at least 11 government websites, all actively promoting four major betting platforms, including BhaggoBD, and betting pages in foreign languages.
The High Court in July banned promotions of betting-related content in any form on social media, online platforms, TV channels, including sports ones, and ordered authorities to place stringent measures against such content.
The court put the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) in charge of carrying out and supervising the instructions.
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The dismislab team used a primary Google search within the 'gov.bd' domain using keywords like 'Casino' and 'Betting' and scrutinised the sitemaps of the government websites found in the search results.
The 'gov.bd' domain is the top-level website domain assigned to government agencies in Bangladesh.
The government websites where the media research platform found such pages belong to key government offices, educational institutions and defence entities.
These include websites of the Bangladesh Economic Zone Authority, Local Government Department, Public Library Directorate, Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation, Ansar and Village Defense Party, Bangladesh Electricity Development Board, and educational institutions like the Rajshahi Education Board, Narayanganj Women's College, and Kishoreganj Government Women's College.
In its article, dismislab said they had notified the Bangladesh e-Government Computer Incident Response Team (BDCIRT) about its findings in an email on 30 May.
An expert told The Business Standard that creating a subdomain without permission from the website admin requires hacking into the control panel containing DNS modification access.
News portal or betting site?
During its research, dismislab learned about the websites of two registered news portals that also showed betting pages.
One of these portals, dailydinkal.net, was a newspaper until July 2020. After that, the website began hosting betting-related content.
The other news portal, ajkerbarta.com, operated as an online news portal until April 2021, when it started featuring betting platforms afterwards.
Similar things happened with Indian govt sites last month
Scammers finding their way into government websites isn't a new thing.
Techcrunch, the US-based online outlet that reported on five crore Bangladeshi citizens' data getting "exposed" online for the first time back in July last year, published an article on 10 May 2024 stating that some Indian government websites have allowed scammers to plant advertisements capable of redirecting visitors to online betting platforms.
TechCrunch discovered around four dozen "gov.in" website links associated with Indian states, including Bihar, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Mizoram and Telangana, which were redirecting to online betting platforms.
Some of these websites belong to state police and property tax departments in the respective states. Search engines, including Google, indexed the scammy links, making online ads easy to find.
The redirecting websites, touted as "Asia's most popular" online betting platform and "the number one online cricket betting app in India," claim to allow betting on games, including cricket tournaments such as the Indian Premier League.
TechCrunch could not identify how the scammers planted the ads on Indian government pages or how long the links were redirecting to the online platforms.
After they alerted India's Computer Emergency Response Team, known as CERT-In, they replied, saying they had contacted the concerned authority for appropriate action.
