RBI’s pipeline for hackers now starts at IIT Kanpur. It isn’t where they want to end up

The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) recently uncovered critical vulnerabilities in its Class 12 board exam portal, which were discovered by a 19-year-old cybersecurity researcher named Deccan Herald Nisarga Adhikary. Instead of learning from the incident, the CBSE publicly denied Adhikary's discovery and subsequently denied his follow-up vulnerability reports.

Adhikary, who is currently a threat intelligence engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, revealed that most of the vulnerabilities he reported remained unpatched and unacknowledged by the government bodies. He expressed frustration with the authorities, stating that they could easily fix such issues if they were more competent.

Adhikary's story is not an isolated case, as Indian enterprises have been left dangerously exposed to post-LLM world cyber threats. In June, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) polled the country's biggest banks, with AI-powered cyberattacks topping their list of concerns. In response, IIT Kanpur has taken steps to address the cybersecurity talent shortage by hiring Adhikary and launching a first-of-its-kind undergraduate cybersecurity program.

The program is designed to admit young hackers through hackathons and includes two years of work experience at government security organizations.