The disruption occurred as soon as the portal went live, pointing to vulnerabilities in the payment infrastructure at the time of launch (Image: AI Generated)The Central Board of Secondary Education‘s revaluation portal was targeted in an alleged malicious attack that compromised its payment gateway and affected approximately 50 students, according to the news agency PTI reports. The breach, linked to the HDFC payment gateway integrated with the CBSE post-result portal, caused serious anomalies in fee displays, with payable amounts swinging wildly from as low as Re 1 to nearly Rs 67,000–68,000 in affected cases.“There were some unauthorised attacks on the portal. The payment gateway was with respect to HDFC… about 50-odd children had got in after the hack,” a source told reporters.Read | ‘Vulnerabilities contained, weaknesses being ruled out’: CBSE deploys team from IITs, government to secure systemThe erratic fee fluctuations are believed to have been deliberate. “I think out of fun or out of mala fide intention, one rupee was shown and then Rs 67-68,000. So, there were about 50 children whose cases the amount had changed,” the source said.The disruption occurred as soon as the portal went live, pointing to vulnerabilities in the payment infrastructure at the time of launch. “I think the portal was not functional for quite some time. There were issues with respect to the amount, where 50 children who came in, and they (hackers) manipulated the system,” the source added.In response to the crisis, the government has mobilised technical experts from IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur, along with teams from the Digital Infrastructure Corporation of India, to audit and strengthen the portal’s architecture and payment gateway integration. “The teams are examining the code and the system to make it seamless and glitch-free,” the source said.Read | Re-evaluation and verification window to open on June 1Four public sector banks — State Bank of India, Canara Bank, Indian Bank and Bank of Maharashtra — have been brought in as additional payment gateways to reduce dependence on a single private-sector provider and bolster the system’s resilience.Story continues below this adThe government’s response was set in motion after Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan met Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on May 24 to discuss the payment and technical difficulties students had encountered during the CBSE post-result and revaluation processes. Following that meeting, the four PSU banks were tasked with assisting CBSE in overhauling its payment infrastructure.“So, their payment gateway has been synced with the portal of the CBSE. I think we had a test run yesterday, and we thought that it was working well,” the source said, indicating that the worst of the disruption may now be behind.In another significant infrastructure upgrade, the portal has been migrated to Amazon Web Services. “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 said.