IIT Kanpur hires 19‑year‑old who exposed CBSE portal flaws

A 19-year-old cybersecurity researcher who identified significant security vulnerabilities in a national education board's digital systems has been hired by the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Nisarga Adhikary has been appointed as an Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) and Threat Intelligence Engineer at C3iHub, the institute's cybersecurity and cyber defence research centre.

Adhikary first gained national attention after discovering multiple security flaws in the Central Board of Secondary Education's (CBSE) Onscreen Marking (OSM) portal. This platform is used by affiliated schools across India to upload and manage student examination marks for board results. According to his analysis, the vulnerabilities could have permitted unauthorized account access and potential tampering with sensitive data. Instead of exploiting these weaknesses, Adhikary followed responsible disclosure practices by reporting them to the Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) in a blog post published on May 22.

IIT Kanpur Director Manindra Agrawal said he reached out to Adhikary after reading that post. Agrawal confirmed the appointment this week, noting that while Adhikary may not be the...