New Delhi, 30 May

The CBSE revaluation portal's payment system was hit by a "malicious attack", with around 50 students getting affected, government sources have said.

"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 said.

According to the sources, the issue led to abnormal fee displays on the portal, where the payable amount in some cases fluctuated from around Re 1 to nearly Rs 67,000-68,000.

"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 in whose cases the amount had changed," the source said.

The glitch was linked to the HDFC payment gateway integrated with the system and occurred when the portal went live.

"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 said.

Four PSU banks -- State Bank of India, Canara Bank, Indian Bank and Bank of Maharashtra -- have also been integrated as additional payment gateways.

Experts from IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur, along with the Digital Infrastructure Corporation of India, are examining the system and strengthening the portal and payment gateway integration, the source said.

"The teams are examining the code and the system to make it seamless and glitch-free," the person added.

On May 24, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan held discussions with Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on the payment and technical issues faced by students during the CBSE post-result and revaluation processes.

During the discussion, it was decided that the four public sector banks mentioned above will assist the CBSE in strengthening its payment gateway infrastructure and the necessary integration with the post-exam portal, the education ministry said.

"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.

"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 added.