CBSE revaluation payment system faces malicious attack; IIT experts, PSU banks step in

The CBSE revaluation portal's payment system was hit by a "malicious attack", with around 50 students gaining unauthorised access, government sources said on Friday. "There were some unauthorised attack on the portal. The payment gateway was with respect to HDFC… about 50-odd children had got in," a source said. According to the sources, the issue led to abnormal fee displays on the portal, where the payable amount in some cases fluctuated from around Rs 1 to nearly Rs 67,000-68,000. "I think out of fun or out of mala fide intention, I think that one rupee was shown and then Rs 67-68,000. So, there were about 50 children in whose case the amount had changed," the source said.

Also read CBSE identifies around 20 answer-sheet mix-up cases on OSM portal

The glitch was linked to the HDFC payment gateway integrated with the system and occurred when the portal went live. "I think the portal for quite some time was not functional. There were issues with respect to the amount where 50 children came in, and they manipulated the system," the source said. Four PSU banks - State Bank of India, Canara Bank, Indian Bank and Bank of Maharashtra - have also been integrated as additional payment gateways. Experts from IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur , along with Digital Infrastructure Corporation of India, are examining the system and strengthening the portal and payment gateway integration, the source said.

Also read From next year, CBSE Class 12 answer sheets on Digilocker: Education ministry

"The teams are examining the code and the system to make it seamless and glitch-free," the person added. On May 24, Pradhan had held discussions with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman regarding the recent payment and technical issues faced by students during the CBSE post-result and revaluation processes. During the discussion, it was decided that four public sector banks earlier mentioned will assist the CBSE in strengthening its payment gateway infrastructure and the necessary integration with the post-exam portal, the education ministry said. "So, their payment gateway have been synced with that of the portal of the CBSE. I think we had a test run yesterday and we thought that it is working well," the source said. "Earlier there were issues of space. So, eventually we went up to Amazon Web Services (AWS). So, now the system is on AWS," the source added.