Nisarga Adhikary, Teen Who Exposed Flaws In CBSE's OSM System, Hired By IIT Kanpur

(MENAFN- Live Mint) Nisarga Adhikary, the teenager who had flagged the vulnerabilities in the Central Board of Secondary Education's (CBSE) on-screen marking (OSM) system, has been hired by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). According to a Hindustan Times report, Nisarga Adhikary was appointed this week as Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) and threat intelligence engineer at the institute's technology innovation hub C3iHub.

In a blog post on May 22, teenage cybersecurity researcher Nisarga Adhikary flagged that the online grading portal used by the CBSE could have permitted a full takeover of an examiner's account, and potentially allowed tampering with marks or disruption of the grading process.

In his post, Nisarga Adhikary claimed to have disclosed five critical vulnerabilities in the OSM portal to Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In); it acknowledged the findings but did not provide any response further. The CBSE had then rejected it, saying the portal was not compromised.

Also Read | Sarthak Sidhant urges CBSE to extend re-evaluation deadline: 'Was busy exposing'

Reacting to the job opportunity, Adhikary said that he was excited.

“I am excited about this opportunity because it is the first time I will be working in a security-focused role. In my earlier jobs, I primarily worked as a software engineer, while cybersecurity was more of a hobby,” Adhikary was quoted as saying.

IIT Kanpur director Manindra Agrawal told HT that he reached out to Nisarga after reading his blog post.

Manondra Agrawal said,“Nisarga Adhikary has been appointed as an engineer in our cybersecurity team. A few years ago, we had similarly recruited a couple of young engineers for the same team. I am not sure whether he is the youngest recruit at IIT Kanpur, but he is certainly among the youngest engineers to have been hired by the institute.”

What is the controversy?

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) replaced the traditional method of checking papers with digital evaluation for Class 12 through the on-screen marking system.

The controversy erupted when some Class 12 students found that their handwritings did not match the answer sheets uploaded by the education board, prompting concerns over possible answer-sheet mismatch in the OSM.

Also Read | IIT green lights CBSE's own re-evaluation portal after Coempt dropped

Later, cracking the whip, the government removed two top CBSE officials – chairman Rahul Singh and secretary Himanshu Gupta – following alleged irregularities in the Class 12 digital evaluation system.

A probe was also ordered to investigate the alleged irregularities and how the board hired these marking services.

The two CBSE officials were transferred and replaced by senior bureaucrats Lokhande Prashant Sitaram and Varun Bhardwaj respectively.

How Congress targeted Centre

After days of protests since the controversy erupted, the Congress has demanded that Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan answer as to why the CBSE was“made to adopt an expensive OSM system at inflated rates”.

The party also demanded an independent investigation and Dharmendra Pradhan's resignation.

(With agency inputs)

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