The Delhi Police has registered an FIR and launched an investigation into a series of coordinated cyber attacks targeting the Central Board of Secondary Education's (CBSE) post-result services portal, officials said on Friday.
The case was registered under Sections 66 and 43(f) of the Information Technology Act after the CBSE filed a formal complaint with the Intelligence Fusion and Strategic Operations (IFSO) unit of the Delhi Police.
According to the board, the attacks were aimed at its post-result services portal, launched on June 2 to facilitate services such as verification and re-evaluation of Class 12 answer sheets.
Attacks Originated From Multiple Locations
In its complaint, the CBSE said the portal came under sustained cyber attacks over the past three days, involving large volumes of malicious traffic from multiple IP addresses located both within India and abroad.
CBSE PRESS RELEASE: CBSE lodges complaint with Delhi Police regarding coordinated cyber attacks on its Post-Result Services Portal. All attacks were successfully mitigated through 24×7 monitoring, with no data breach or compromise of systems. Details here…
The board noted that the portal serves lakhs of students seeking post-result services and that any disruption could affect a large number of stakeholders, cause public inconvenience, and generate dissatisfaction among students.
CBSE alleged that the attackers appeared to be attempting to disrupt the platform, deny access to legitimate users and extract information without authorisation.
Systems Remained Secure, Says CBSE
The board said it approached the IFSO unit due to the scale and coordinated nature of the attacks and sought legal action against those responsible.
However, CBSE maintained that all attempted attacks were successfully mitigated and that its systems remained secure.
"Despite these malicious attempts, CBSE's systems and databases remain secure and uncompromised. No data breach or unauthorised access has been detected," the board said.
It added that round-the-clock monitoring and response mechanisms, supported by cybersecurity teams from IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Madras, the Digital India Corporation, the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), CERT-In and other central agencies, helped counter the attacks.
Row Over Class 12 Answer Sheets
The cyber attack investigation comes amid a separate controversy involving complaints from Class 12 students who alleged that scanned copies of answer sheets made available by the board did not match their handwriting, raising concerns over the on-screen marking (OSM) system.
In response to the complaints, the Cabinet Secretariat on Tuesday announced the formation of a one-member committee to examine the procurement of services related to the OSM system by the CBSE.
Police said the investigation into the cyber attacks is ongoing.
