‘Excited & Honoured’: Nisarga Adhikary Who Exposed Loopholes In CBSE OSM, Now Hired By IIT Kanpur | India News
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The issues flagged by Adhikary formed part of a wider controversy surrounding the implementation of on-screen marking.
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (File Photo)
What started as a blog post by the 19-year-old cybersecurity expert Nisarg Adhikary, exposing the faultlines within the debut of the digital paper-checking system by the CBSE for Class 12 Board evaluation, has now received a job offer by the IIT Kanpur.
Last week, Nisarg was appointed as the Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) and threat intelligence engineer at IIT Kanpur’s technology innovation hub C3iHub, less than a month after his post on X exposing CBSE’s vulnerabilities went viral.
Nisarg confirmed that the offer was made by the IIT Kanpur director when they both met in New Delhi, after the post reached IIT Kanpur officials on May 22.
In an exclusive conversation with CNN-News18, IIT Kanpur Director, Manindra Agrawal said, “The CBSE episode by the 19-year-old Nisarg Adhikari was impressive after our team of engineers investigated how he did it. This domain of cybersecurity is for unusual people who excel and who try to find system and you need a certain approach to be good at. Nisarg Adhikary is a focussed boy, he is very dedicated towards cybersecurity, he is very passionate & quite self-driven. He has already learnt a lot of things, and he is going to learn more. The vulnerabilities highlighted by Adhikary are just one part of the controversy. I liked Nisarg because he was smart enough to identify the issues which were ignored for long.”
On being asked, if offering the 19-year-old a responsibility is only based on his exposé of the CBSE, Agarwal said that he found the vulnerabilities and then he reported. He was quite responsible; he didn’t exploit it. “In this area, it’s quite easy to influence others in a wrong way too but we are always looking out for individuals who are sensible and responsible while dealing with these sectors. We have a major cybersecurity system in place that we want to continuously improve and hence We want young and dynamic minds to join that interface and help us to build it better, the young Individuals who have the talent and appropriate understanding of it are required. He told us that he isn’t interested in at present in academics and we want to value his intelligence and skills for good. “
Speaking about the comprised system of the CBSE, an IIT Kanpur official, who didn’t wish to be named, said, “When we looked into the portal, we found several vulnerabilities within the system. But it is not only about what this boy found; the reality is that due care was not taken before launching the portal. Certain certifiers were not analyzed, and the entire process was rushed through. The security of the system was very weak. Nobody really noticed it earlier, and it probably was also bad prior to this, but this time the attention was given to it. In the software development world, many developers do not take care of the security aspect, and it is usually not compromised. To prevent these issues, you need to have a larger understanding so that people can point out loopholes.”
Nisarg, while responding to the development to CNN-News18, said, “I want to contribute to the best of my abilities, and I hope this will be a great learning experience for me.”
Speaking about the details of the remuneration, he revealed that he was expecting a bit more CTC/salary, but he has accepted the offer. “I think that our educational institutions need to be more serious about cybersecurity and data privacy/safety. I also think proper audits should be done by external and internal firms,” he added while speaking on how crucial it is for the testing giants and the educational bodies to protect the data internally, especially after the CBSE OSM controversy. He further said that right now, though he is just 19, his approach is to work towards learning more, rather than completing further studies or college going ahead.
“I am not planning on enrolling in a college at the moment. Not interested in Academia as such,” said Adhikary.
Acting on directives from Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on May 24, a joint four-member team of cybersecurity, computer systems, and process experts from IIT Kanpur and IIT Madras was deployed to assist CBSE in resolving glitches on its post-result services portal.
About the Author
Simran Babbar is a Senior Correspondent at CNN-News18, covering key developments in emerging sectors related to education and investigations. Through her reports, she brings significant updates from t…Read More
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