CBSE says re-evaluation portal faced cyberattacks on Day 1; students continue reporting glitches

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Tuesday (June 2) said that its newly launched Class 12 re-evaluation portal had come under multiple cyberattack attempts, even as students continued to report technical glitches while trying to access the platform.

The update came on the very day the portal was finally launched after repeated delays over the past four days.

In a post on social media, CBSE said that the portal was handling more than 8,000 concurrent users and that over 16,000 students had successfully submitted their applications as of 3:00 pm on Tuesday.

The board further claimed that its cybersecurity teams had detected and mitigated several attempts to disrupt services.

"While thousands of students accessed the CBSE re-evaluation portal today, malicious actors attempted to disrupt services through a barrage of cyberattacks," CBSE said.

According to the board, the latest incident involved a denial-of-service attack that generated nearly 1.5 million hits on the portal within just two minutes, along with more than one lakh attempts at unauthorised file access.

CBSE added that it had also made several improvements based on student feedback, including extending session time limits to make the process "more convenient and seamless".

"Our teams remain vigilant and responsive to ensure our dearest students are facilitated in all ways possible," the board said.

Students continue to report glitches

Despite the board's assurances, several students continued to report difficulties accessing and using the portal.

Some users complained that the login system was not functioning properly despite entering the correct credentials.

"As expected, the reval portal sign-in is not working. In spite of filling correct data, error message comes 'Login Request failed'. Multiple attempts, same result. Congratulations CBSE for continued harassment," one student wrote on social media.

Others reported that their applications were not being saved after submission, forcing them to restart the process repeatedly.

"Whenever I submit it, it redirects me to the login page and when I log back in, it asks me to fill the application again from the beginning," another student posted while tagging the board.

Several users also questioned whether the portal had been launched before adequate testing was completed.

"After one day's delay, CBSE has brought alive a website which has been giving issues to many users. Looks like they hastily created a heavily bugged website, which students have to struggle with now," another post read.

Latest development in the OSM controversy

The complaints come less than 12 hours after CBSE finally opened the long-delayed portal for verification of discrepancies and re-evaluation of Class 12 answer sheets.

Students who have received scanned copies of their evaluated answer books can use the portal to report issues such as missing pages, missing supplementary sheets, blurred scans, incorrect answer books being uploaded, and evaluation against the wrong question paper set. They can also seek re-evaluation of specific answers.

The re-evaluation window will remain open until June 6.

However, students have continued to raise concerns not only about the functioning of the portal but also about delays in receiving scanned copies of answer sheets despite completing the payment process.

OSM rollout remains under scrutiny

The latest portal issues add to the growing scrutiny surrounding CBSE's first full-scale implementation of the On-Screen Marking (OSM) system for Class 12 board examinations.

Since the declaration of results, students have reported unexpectedly low scores, blurred scans, missing pages, unchecked answers, answer-sheet mismatches and technical glitches in the board's post-result support system.

Earlier this week, CBSE acknowledged that certain discrepancies and "vulnerabilities" had been identified in the OSM ecosystem and said corrective measures were being undertaken.