New Delhi, May 31: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which has been under intense criticism over widespread irregularities in marking of Class 12 exam papers, today acknowledged “vulnerabilities” in the OnMark portal and said these are being addressed.
Thus far, the Board has been refusing to admit any lapse in On-Screen Marking (OSM) system even while thousands of students have complained about irregularities in the marking of their Class 12 exam papers and ethical hackers have flagged loopholes in the portal meant for storing the exam papers.
“We have been closely monitoring the vulnerabilities in the OnMark portal of our service provider that are being flagged in the public domain,” the CBSE said in a post on X.
“An expert team of cyber security professionals has been deployed over the last few days from across various arms of the government as well as the IITs to fortify these systems, including taking them over to a more security set up,” it added.
It said the “identified vulnerabilities have been contained and other exploitable weaknesses are being ruled out.”
The acknowledgement by CBSE of the problems comes against the backdrop of ethical hackers flagging security loopholes.
Questions have also been raised over the tender process through which the contract was awarded to a particular company for the OSM system.
CBSE to Ethical Hackers
The CBSE said it is “grateful to all alert citizens and ethical hackers (for) pointing out such weaknesses, and have gotten in touch with some of them directly.”
The Board invited others who may have identified vulnerabilities or security concerns to share their findings with its security team via email at [email protected].
Controversy
CBSE’s digital infrastructure has recently come under intense scrutiny and triggered questions after a 19-year-old ethical hacker Nisarga Adhikary alleged that answer sheets and question papers stored in an AWS bucket were publicly accessible online.
Adhikary’s disclosures triggered a nationwide unease among the student community and a debate over the CBSE’s technology ecosystem.
