NEW DELHI: The National Testing Agency (NTA) took swift action on Tuesday to address vulnerabilities in its NEET UG portal, which had been pointed out by a 16-year-old self-identified “cyber security researcher.” The researcher, Rylen Anil, warned that these weaknesses could potentially be exploited to access sensitive information.
According to sources within the NTA, a flaw that had briefly impacted the website has since been rectified. This development came on a day when the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) faced a series of cyber attacks.
Anil voiced his concerns on X, noting that he is followed by the NTA administration. The agency, which has been under scrutiny following a recent paper leak, acted quickly to close the security gap that could have allowed unauthorized access to details concerning examination observers, center coordinators, and test centers—specifically names, mobile numbers, and email addresses.
While NTA sources acknowledged the repair efforts, they refrained from fully endorsing Anil’s claims regarding the potential implications of the vulnerabilities. Anil alleged that these issues might have enabled unauthorized activities such as exporting internal records, generating appointment letters, modifying observer data, uploading templates, and managing administrative mappings related to the examination process. This triggered alarm among students, parents, and cybersecurity experts.
As screenshots and allegations circulated online, multiple users reported temporary outages of the re-examination portal, which displayed a “404 Not Found” message. This situation further fueled speculation regarding possible backend interventions or emergency technical modifications.
Later in the evening, NTA officials confirmed that necessary corrective measures had been implemented and that the portal was operating normally.
