The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) revaluation portal has received more than 56,000 applications for verification and re-evaluation as of 9:30 pm on Wednesday, marking a significant increase from 28,000 successful submissions recorded by 10 pm on Tuesday night. According to updates shared by CBSE on X, this sharp rise in applications comes as students continue to seek answers to discrepancies in their answer books. The board successfully thwarted a 3.8-million-packet denial-of-service (DoS) attack on Wednesday afternoon, demonstrating its proactive approach to cybersecurity threats. CBSE's technical teams are actively monitoring portal performance and introducing refinements to ensure a smoother, faster and more seamless experience for students, as reported by Business Standard.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) revaluation portal was recently targeted by a malicious cyberattack that affected its payment gateway integration with HDFC Bank. According to government sources reported by PTI and Business Standard, the breach resulted in around 50 students gaining unauthorised access to the system. The issue caused significant disruptions, with fee amounts manipulated from as low as Re 1 to as high as ₹67,000-68,000, creating confusion during the revaluation application process. As per PTI sources, the affected students were able to manipulate payment-related information, with the altered amounts displayed either as a prank or with malicious intent. The glitch was linked to the HDFC payment gateway integrated with the CBSE system and occurred shortly after the portal became operational. A senior government official confirmed that unauthorized attacks occurred on the portal, which is linked to the HDFC Bank payment gateway, with the discrepancies occurring when the portal went live.
In response to the security breach, CBSE has implemented comprehensive strengthening measures for its payment infrastructure. The board has expanded its payment gateway by integrating four public sector banks - State Bank of India, Canara Bank, Indian Bank and Bank of Maharashtra - as additional payment partners. More than 56,000 payment transactions were processed through these four public sector banks, with SBI leading at over 40,000 payments, followed by Bank of Baroda at more than 7,500 transactions, Indian Bank at over 5,000 customers, and Canara Bank at more than 4,000 customers. CBSE confirmed that students do not need to hold accounts with these banks to make payments and can use any of the designated gateways. Technical experts from IIT Madras, IIT Kanpur and the Digital Infrastructure Corporation of India have been tasked with examining the system and strengthening the portal's security architecture.
To resolve post-result and revaluation payment issues, Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Finance Minister Sitharaman have aligned four public sector banks to strengthen CBSE's payment gateway infrastructure. The system's gateway has been successfully synced and tested with CBSE's portal. Additionally, to address previous space and capacity constraints, the entire system has been migrated to Amazon Web Services (AWS) to ensure smoother digital processing for students. This migration aims to fix previous space and capacity issues that had been affecting the portal's performance. The shift followed a security incident in which CBSE reported that unauthorised access had manipulated fee amounts on the payment gateway operated by HDFC Bank, prompting the board to remove the HDFC gateway and migrate payments to the four public sector banks.
