CBSE breaks silence on OSM row
Allegations surrounding vendors, tender norms and digital infrastructure have widened the controversy
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) broke its silence on the ongoing controversy around the On-Screen Marking (OSM) on Sunday. The board, in a statement on X, said on Sunday that they are closely monitoring vulnerabilities identified in the OSM portal of its service provider after concerns were flagged in the public domain.
“We have been closely monitoring the vulnerabilities in the OnMark portal of our service provider that are being flagged in the public domain,” the board posted on X. The CBSE said an expert team of cybersecurity professionals from various Government agencies and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) has been working over the past few days to strengthen the system’s security infrastructure.
The controversy surrounding CBSE’s digital evaluation ecosystem intensified after 19-year-old Nisarga Adhikary claimed he discovered security vulnerabilities that allegedly exposed examination-related files online. Adhikary alleged that a CBSE-linked cloud storage system was improperly configured, allowing users to access and browse files without authentication.
According to his claims, scanned answer sheets, question papers and other examination-related materials could potentially be viewed through the exposed storage setup. He also alleged that multiple institutions were using the same infrastructure.
The CBSE got into more trouble as after Adhikary’s claims a blog post by a Class 12 student from Ranchi in Jharkhand, Sidhant, published his findings reviewing tender documents of the OSM vendors.
Sidhant’s blog, titled How CBSE rewrote rules to favour Coempt EduTeck, alleges that the board systematically modified eligibility and technical requirements across three successive tender rounds in a manner that benefited the eventual winning vendor, Hyderabad-based Coempt EduTeck Private Limited. The company has denied any wrongdoing, as has the CBSE.
Coempt, the company that did the OSM for the CBSE exam, has come under attack as the firm allegedly was already mired in controversy under its old name, Globarena.
“We are grateful to all alert citizens and ethical hackers pointing out such weaknesses, and have gotten in touch with some of them directly. We request any others to reach out to our security teams at secy-cbse@nic.in for any further inputs,” the board added on X.
The statement comes amid concerns raised in the public domain regarding alleged vulnerabilities in the portal used by the board’s service provider.
Several CBSE Class 12 students had flagged mix-up cases after accessing scanned copies uploaded on the portal and finding that the answer sheets did not belong to them.
Vedant, a Class 12 student, had recently alleged in a social media post that the Physics answer sheet uploaded by the CBSE under the revaluation process was not his. It went viral, after which several other students took to social media with similar claims.
The CBSE later reached out to them and shared their correct answer sheets. The board said that it had taken up on “top priority” the cases related to alleged mismatched answer sheets and other concerns faced by students in the revaluation process.
Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Sunday held discussions with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the payment and technical issues faced by students during the CBSE post-result and revaluation processes.
