The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) faced a serious issue when its revaluation portal was attacked by hackers, disrupting the payment process for about 50 Class 12 students. This incident has led to a delay in the next phase of the re-evaluation process until the payment system is secured, according to education ministry officials.
The attack occurred shortly after the revaluation portal went live on May 19. Reports suggest that unauthorized access affected the payment gateway, causing incorrect fee amounts to be displayed. Some students saw fees as low as Re 1, while others faced charges near ₹67,000-68,000.
A senior official from CBSE, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the board is working on processing refunds for those who were overcharged due to this error. Thankfully, officials have confirmed that no student data was compromised; the issue was limited to the payment interface.
The revaluation portal allows students to access scanned copies of their evaluated answer sheets and apply for re-evaluations. Since May 26, the portal has been down for maintenance. It was initially set to reopen for students to submit questions regarding their evaluations, first on May 26, then postponed to May 29, and has now been rescheduled for June 1.
The disruption coincided with an unusually high number of applications, with over 400,000 students requesting scanned copies of their answer books from May 19 to May 25. This represents nearly one-fourth of the 1.8 million students who took the Class 12 board exams this year.
To address these issues, CBSE has removed the payment gateway from HDFC Bank and has integrated systems from four public sector banks: State Bank of India, Canara Bank, Indian Bank, and Bank of Baroda. Tests on the new payment gateways were successfully completed on Thursday.
After the incident, CBSE requested an independent technical review of the portal and brought in experts from IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur to examine its coding and backend systems. These teams are working to make the platform more efficient and reliable. The infrastructure has also been shifted to Amazon Web Services to better handle heavy traffic.
On May 24, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan met with Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to discuss the technical and payment-related challenges, leading to the decision to strengthen the payment system through the integration of public sector banks.
Once the portal reopens on June 1, students who have already accessed their scanned answer sheets will be able to submit objections. These will then be reviewed by subject experts using the board’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system.
