Nisarga Adhikary made headlines over his claims of vulnerabilities in the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) digital system. Today, the 19-year-old Gen Z has landed at IIT Kanpur’s cybersecurity innovation hub.
Earlier this year, while CBSE was rolling out its OSM-based evaluation process, he began examining publicly accessible components linked to the system. He later claimed to have identified multiple vulnerabilities and reported them to CERT-In in February 2026 before making his findings public. According to his disclosures, the issues included weaknesses in authentication mechanisms and access controls that could potentially have allowed unauthorised access to parts of the evaluation infrastructure.
His findings quickly attracted attention as students, teachers, and parents were already raising concerns about glitches, evaluation inconsistencies, and operational problems linked to the OSM rollout.
Following directions from Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on May 24, IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur deputed a four-member team of computer systems, process and cybersecurity experts to help CBSE address glitches in its post-result services portal.
According to the IIT Director, the role will allow Adhikary to further develop his skills while contributing to cybersecurity and threat intelligence initiatives being undertaken by C3iHub. The statement reflects the institute’s view that identifying weaknesses in digital systems and responsibly reporting them are valuable cybersecurity skills that can be channelled into research and national cyber-defence efforts.
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