The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) addresses allegations involving its On-Screen Marking (OSM) digital evaluation system after a 19-year-old ethical hacker publicly claims to have found “vulnerabilities” in the portal. CBSE states that the URL discussed in social media posts refers to a testing platform containing sample data, and not the system used for actual assessment and marking. In separate communications, CBSE acknowledges a technical glitch that led to an answer sheet mix-up for a student and says the problem has been rectified.
CBSE also says it responds to security findings by deploying a cybersecurity team, including experts from government agencies and academic institutions, to strengthen the digital evaluation ecosystem. The board’s position is that there is no security breach of the live examination-related system, even as it treats the reported issues as input for improving safeguards. The matter centers on whether the alleged “compromised” portal was part of production services or only a test environment, alongside the resolution of a distinct marking-related error.
