CBSE Portal Faces ‘Barrage’ Of Cyberattacks; 1.5 Million Hits Within 2 Minutes, 1 Lakh Attempts Of Unauthorised File Access

New Delhi: The re-evaluation portal of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which went live after multiple postponements, faced a series of cyberattack attempts on Tuesday.

More than 16,000 students had submitted applications by 3 pm even as the platform came under cyberattacks, CBSE posted on X.

Sharing details, CBSE stated that ‘malicious actors’ attempted to disrupt services, the most recent being a denial of service (DoS) attack attempt which caused a staggering 1.5 million hits on the portal within 2 minutes and more than 1 lakh attempts of unauthorised file access.

Despite the wave of cyberattacks, the portal remained functional and continued to process student applications.

The re-evaluation portal is currently supporting over 8,000 concurrent users, CBSE said.

The Board noted that several improvements had been introduced after receiving feedback from students. Among changes, session time limits have been extended to make the application process smoother and more user-friendly.

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had earlier indicated that a maximum of 20 per cent of eligible students, that is, around 80,000, were expected to apply for re-evaluation.

That number could be significantly higher given that 16,000 students had submitted applications within 10 hours of the portal going live and with the window to remain open for three more days.

“Our teams remain vigilant and responsive to ensure students are able to access services without disruption,” CBSE said.

CBSE’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) system has been under scrutiny after students and evaluators reported technical glitches and delays in post-result services, including the re-evaluation process.