The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Sunday stated that it is closely monitoring technical vulnerabilities related to the service provider for a portal used by students to access their scanned answer sheets. The board added that a team of cybersecurity experts has been deployed to fortify all digital assets.
Allegations of Unsecured Data Storage
While CBSE did not specify the vulnerability in question, the statement came hours after a user on X, @ni5arga, shared screenshots alleging that the board had stored all scanned answer sheets on a cloud server without password protection. The user, who identified himself as a software engineer, claimed that CBSE stored documents in an Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud storage bucket without authentication. He explained that this technical loophole allowed anyone on the internet to browse and download scanned answer booklets and question papers from the 2026 board examinations.
Political and Public Reactions
Former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh also posted on X, calling the incident a breach of privacy affecting 2 million students. Ramesh alleged that CBSE manipulated technical specifications in the request for proposal to benefit COEMPT, the company contracted for digital evaluation. He pointed to folds and drop shadows visible on the leaked answer sheets, suggesting they were scanned using mobile phones rather than dedicated machines. According to Ramesh, the third RFP dropped the specification for robotic scanners.
CBSE's Response
CBSE stated, "We are grateful to all alert citizens and ethical hackers pointing out such weaknesses, and have gotten in touch with some of them directly." The board added, "We have been closely monitoring the vulnerabilities in the OnMark portal of our service provider that are being flagged in the public domain. An expert team of cybersecurity 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 secure set up. The identified vulnerabilities have been contained, and other exploitable weaknesses are being ruled out."
Ongoing Controversy
The board's digital evaluation initiative has faced multiple controversies since last week. Issues began with the payment gateway charging either exorbitantly high fees for obtaining scanned answer sheets or a ridiculously low amount. Technical problems then escalated, with students not receiving digital scanned copies and one student reportedly receiving the wrong answer sheet. The fiasco has continued to unfold.
