Teen hacker who exposed CBSE portal flaws joins IIT Kanpur's cybersecurity hub

New Delhi: Days after 19-year-old ethical hacker Nisarga Adhikary exposed several technical gaps in CBSE's on-screen marking (OSM) portal, IIT Kanpur is learnt to have brought him in to join its premier national cybersecurity hub C3i on a full-time basis, ET has learnt.

ET gathers that doors are also set to open for another ethical hacker for a possible role at C3i. Adhikary joined the C3iHub as its OSINT and threat intelligence engineer on June 9, it has been confirmed.

The IITK C3i hub or IHUB NTIHAC FOUNDATION, set up as a Section-8 company (under the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems), is considered key to India's cybersecurity ecosystem and is actively engaged in safeguarding national critical infrastructure, addressing vulnerabilities in cybersecurity mechanisms across various government and private sector organisations besides cybercrime investigations and developing startup capability in the area.


C3i runs a specific vertical on Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) wing, and Adhikary is likely to start off on the same with more to follow, given that these are areas he is already well-versed with, as evident in the case of the CBSE-OSM vulnerability mapping.

ET gathers that an outreach was made to Adhikary and at least one more ethical hacker, even as an expert team of IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Madras experts were working to secure the CBSE portals.