Cyberattack on CBSE re-evaluation site hours after launch

NEW DELHI: A potentially debilitating wave of alleged cyberattacks struck CBSE's newly launched Class 12 verification and re-evaluation portal within hours of its activation on Tuesday, raising fresh concerns over the cybersecurity preparedness of India's high-stakes examination infrastructure and the safety of sensitive student data linked to the board's on-screen marking (OSM) system.CBSE said the site faced a denial-of-service attack that generated nearly 15 lakh hits within two minutes and more than one lakh attempts to gain unauthorised access to files.16k have successfully filed re-evaluation applications: CBSEThe CBSE re-evaluation portal is currently supporting more than 8,000 concurrent users. As of 3pm today (Tuesday), over 16,000 students have successfully submitted their applications,” the board said. “While thousands of students accessed the CBSE re-evaluation portal Tuesday, malicious actors attempted to disrupt services through a barrage of cyberattacks,” it added.Srinivas L, joint MD and joint CEO of 63SATS Cybertech, described the alleged attack as “a coordinated, two-pronged operation”.“The DOS (disk operating system) is the smokescreen. The file access probing is what they actually came for. You don’t throw that kind of volume at a portal unless you’re trying to pull something out while everyone’s busy fighting the fire,” Srinivas said.He warned that examination platforms remain highly vulnerable because attack windows are predictable and the data involved includes minors’ personal information, scanned answer sheets and Aadhaar-linked identity details.

“Most of these platforms are sized for a normal day’s traffic, not a deliberate surge built to break them,” he said.CBSE maintained that despite the attacks, the portal remained operational and had been refined after student feedback, including extension of session time limits to make submissions “more convenient”.The portal went live a day after its scheduled launch on June 1. CBSE officials had earlier attributed the postponement to technical issues, triggering anxiety among students awaiting access for verification and re-evaluation after obtaining scanned copies of answer scripts.Students, however, continued to report difficulties. Tridip Pramanick posted on X that correct chemistry answers had been marked wrong and urged CBSE to reopen the photocopy portal. Anshika Patel, said the platform repeatedly crashed during the scanned-copy application process, while Mahender S Mahara reported “access denied” errors and login failures even after launch.Some students also said they were yet to receive scanned copies of answer sheets.

CBSE had not responded to those complaints till the filing of this report.The controversy had earlier prompted the education ministry to deploy a four-member technical team comprising experts from IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Madras to audit the platform and strengthen cybersecurity safeguards linked to the OSM system.