Nisarga Adhikary claimed he had hacked the CBSE website and identified serious lapses in the agency’s On Screen Marking (OSM) system.

While still in the midst of fury from students on the On Screen Marking (OSM) system for Class 12 board exams, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) found itself at the centre of another controversy recently, with a teen claiming to have “hacked” its portal.

A 19-year-old “hobbyist cybersecurity researcher” Nisarga Adhikary is behind the big claims, following which the CBSE also released a clarification on Tuesday, rejecting claims that its marking platform had been compromised.

A senior official from the ministry of electronics and information technology (IT) of India told Hindustan Times that CERT-In (the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team) is looking into the matter and raised it with CBSE, while also suggesting measures to fix the issues, which they later undertook to complete. The response was to queries about the action taken following Nisarga’s disclosure to CERT-In about alleged loopholes in February.

Notably, CBSE had introduced the OSM system for the assessment of Class 12 Board examinations in February this year. Under this method, answer sheets are scanned digitally and checked online. According to the education board, this helps avoid tallying errors and reduces manual involvement.

What is the ‘hacking’ claim controversy?
Nisarga Adhikary, a 19-year-old cybersecurity hobby researcher who completed his Class 12 examinations this year, claimed he had hacked the CBSE website and identified serious lapses in the OSM system.

Although his X post dated May 22 initially received little attention, technology entrepreneur Deedy Das later noticed it and shared it on his own account. Das described it as “an absolute embarrassment” and claimed that the flaws could have enabled someone to “view and CHANGE any students’ marks”.

In a detailed blog post published on his website and also shared on X, Nisarga said he had identified several major security flaws in CBSE’s OSM portal in February and reported them to CERT-In.

However, he claimed that many of the issues he flagged remained unresolved for a considerable period.