By late December 2025, Prothom Alo is navigating its most significant operational crisis in 27 years. The disruption you are seeing is the result of a coordinated physical assault on its core infrastructure following the death of student leader Sharif Osman Hadi.
1. The Physical and Digital "Blackout" (Dec 18–19)
The primary disruption occurred on the night of December 18, 2025, when a violent mob stormed the Prothom Alo headquarters (Pragati Bhaban) in Karwan Bazar, Dhaka.
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The Sabotage: Assailants looted more than 150 computers and laptops, destroyed server rooms, and intentionally set fire to the building.
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Financial Impact: A police report submitted on December 22 estimated the destruction at Tk 32 crore ($2.7 million), with Tk 2.5 crore in equipment and cash looted.
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The Outage: For the first time since its founding in 1998, the paper failed to publish its print edition on Friday, December 19. The digital portal was forced offline for roughly 17 hours as technical staff fled the building to save their lives.
2. Current Status: Recovery and Resilience (Dec 26)
As of today, Friday, December 26, 2025, the official website is Operational and Secure.
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Site Status: https://www.prothomalo.com is UP and reachable.
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Data Recovery: Technical teams have restored operations using off-site backups and cloud redundancy, despite the physical destruction of their local Network Video Recorders (NVRs) and servers.
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Judicial Action: Cases have been filed under the Anti-Terrorism Act and the Cyber Security Ordinance. As of this week, 17 individuals have been arrested in connection with the attack.
3. The "Cloned Site" Warning
If you are seeing unusual behavior, it is likely not a hack of the main site, but a Phishing Signal.
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The Threat: Prothom Alo recently exposed a network of cloned domains—fake sites masquerading as government services (like myGov) to harvest citizen NID data.
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The Vigilance: Always ensure you are on the "HTTPS" secure version of the site. Any variation in the URL (e.g., https://www.google.com/search?q=prothom-alo-news.com) is a fraudulent "Noise" site designed for data harvesting.
The Strategic Takeaway: Kinetic vs. Digital War
The 2026 reality for global media is that the "Hacking" threat has moved from the screen to the street. The downtime of Prothom Alo was not caused by a code injection, but by the physical removal of the Sovereign Hardware.
For the reader, the "Signal" is clear: the site is currently safe, but the environment remains high-risk. Accessing the news via the official Prothom Alo App is currently the most secure way to bypass potential DNS spoofing or local internet throttling.
Principal Information Sources
Prothom Alo English: Official Statement on the Karwan Bazar Attack
https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/lq7ptonxgq
The Business Standard: Tk 32cr Destruction and Police Case Filing
https://www.tbsnews.net/bangladesh/violent-mob-attack-prothom-alo-causes-tk32cr-destruction-1316726
Times of India: Editor Sajjad Sharif Recounts 'Darkest Night'
OHCHR: UN Expert Condemns Attack on Prothom Alo and Daily Star
