The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE)’s re-evaluation portal was hit by a “malicious cyberattack” that disrupted payment processing for around 50 Class XII students and forced the board to postpone the next phase of the re-evaluation process until the payment system is secured, education department officials familiar with the matter said on Friday.
According to a senior ministry official, the payment gateway linked to the CBSE stock exchange’s revaluation portal was attacked soon after the system went live on May 19.
“There have been some unauthorized attacks on the portal. The malicious cyber attack affected the infrastructure of the payment gateway, resulting in incorrect fees being displayed during transactions. About 50 students were affected. In some cases, the fees displayed were as low as Re 1, while in others they rose to almost $“67,000-68,000,” the official said.
Speaking on the matter, a senior CBSE official, requesting anonymity, said: “The board is processing refunds for students who paid more than the prescribed fees due to the glitch.”
Officials confirmed that no student data was hacked, and the attack was only related to the payment interface.
The portal, which students use to obtain scanned copies of assessed answer books and apply for re-evaluation, has remained unavailable since May 26. It was originally scheduled to reopen on the same day for students to lodge objections to questions after accessing scanned answer sheets. The reopening was later postponed to May 29 and has now been rescheduled to June 1.
This disruption came amid an unusually large volume of requests. More than 400,000 students requested scanned copies of their answer books between May 19 and May 25, accounting for nearly a quarter of the nearly 1.8 million students who took part in the Class 12 board exams this year, officials said.
As part of the corrective measures, the CBI has removed HDFC Bank’s payment gateway from operation and integrated payment systems of four public sector banks – State Bank of India, Canara Bank, Indian Bank and Bank of Baroda, ministry officials said.
Officials said successful tests of the new payment gateways were conducted on Thursday.
Following the disruption, the board sought an independent technical review of the platform and hired experts from IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur to audit the gateway code, payment integrations and backend systems.
“These teams are checking the code and system to make it smooth and error-free,” said the above-mentioned CBSE official, adding that the infrastructure has also been migrated to Amazon Web Services to improve scalability and handle heavy traffic.
Earlier on May 24, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan discussed technical and payment-related issues with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, following which it was decided to enhance the payment architecture of the portal through integration with public sector banks.
Students who have already received scanned copies of assessed answer books will be able to file objections to the questions once the portal reopens on June 1, CBSE officials said. Answers will then be re-evaluated by subject experts through the panel’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system.
