Ahmedabad Times

The Central Board of Secondary Training’s (CBSE) revaluation portal was hit by a “malicious cyberattack” that disrupted cost processing for round 50 Class 12 college students and compelled the board to defer the subsequent part of its re-evaluation course of till the cost system was secured, training ministry officers conversant in the matter mentioned on Friday.

In response to a senior ministry official, the cost gateway linked to the CBSE’s revaluation portal was attacked shortly after the system went dwell on Might 19.

“There have been some unauthorized assaults on the portal. The malicious cyberattack affected the cost gateway infrastructure, leading to incorrect price shows throughout transactions. Round 50 college students had been affected. In some instances, the price displayed was as little as Re 1, whereas in others it shot as much as almost ₹67,000-68,000,” the official mentioned.

Talking on the matter, a senior CBSE official, requesting anonymity, mentioned, “The board is processing refunds for college kids who paid greater than the prescribed price due to the glitch.”

Officers confirmed that no pupil information was breached, and the assault was solely involved with the cost interface.

The portal, utilized by college students to acquire scanned copies of evaluated reply books and apply for re-evaluation, has remained unavailable since Might 26. It was initially scheduled to reopen the identical day for college kids to submit question-wise objections after accessing scanned reply sheets. The reopening was later postponed to Might 29 and has now been rescheduled to June 1.

The disruption got here amid an unusually excessive quantity of functions. Greater than 400,000 college students sought scanned copies of their reply books between Might 19 and Might 25, accounting for almost one-fourth of round 1.8 million college students who appeared for the Class 12 board examinations this 12 months, the officers mentioned.

As a part of the corrective measures, CBSE has eliminated HDFC Financial institution’s cost gateway from the method and built-in cost techniques of 4 public sector banks — State Financial institution of India, Canara Financial institution, Indian Financial institution and Financial institution of Baroda, the ministry officers mentioned.

Officers mentioned profitable check runs of the brand new cost gateways had been performed on Thursday.

Following the disruption, the board sought an impartial technical overview of the platform and roped in consultants from IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur to audit the portal’s code, cost integrations and backend techniques.

“These groups are analyzing the code and the system to make it seamless and glitch-free,” the CBSE official quoted above mentioned, including that the infrastructure has moreover been migrated to Amazon Internet Providers to enhance scalability and deal with heavy site visitors.

Earlier on Might 24, Union training minister Dharmendra Pradhan mentioned the technical and payment-related points with finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, following which it was determined to strengthen the portal’s cost structure by public sector financial institution integration.

CBSE officers mentioned college students who’ve already obtained scanned copies of their evaluated reply books will be capable of submit question-wise objections as soon as the portal reopens on June 1. The responses will then be reassessed by topic consultants by the board’s On-Display screen Marking (OSM) system.