In a firm rebuttal, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee has dismissed allegations of a large-scale data breach affecting lakhs of JEE (Advanced) aspirants, calling the claims “misleading and factually incorrect”. The institute has also stressed that no sensitive information was compromised or mass-extracted following what it described as a temporary cloud storage misconfiguration.
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The clarification comes amid widespread discussions on social media over alleged exposure of candidate data, prompting IIT Roorkee to issue detailed explanations regarding the incident and the technical issues involved.
“Misleading and factually incorrect”
The institute, which conducted the JEE (Advanced) examination this year, said the information being circulated online does not accurately represent what actually happened. It also alleged that there was an attempt to spread misinformation.
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“Claims of a data breach and privacy violation affecting lakhs of JEE (Advanced) aspirants are misleading and factually incorrect. The information circulating on social media is misleading and does not accurately reflect what happened. There is an attempt at spreading misinformation, which is far from the truth,” IIT Roorkee said in a series of posts on X.
“Read-only” access, no bulk data download
IIT Roorkee maintained that the affected storage was in “read only” mode, meaning no changes could be made to the data. It also said there was no evidence of large-scale data extraction.
“The affected storage was read-only, meaning no data could be edited or deleted. An analysis of cloud access logs confirmed that no bulk download occurred (the read-only access was limited to less than 0.05 per cent of the data),” it said.
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The institute further asserted that “no sensitive information was compromised or mass-extracted” and added that the incident had “zero impact on examination outcomes, including marks, ranks, and category of the candidates”.
What happened?
The clarification follows claims made by a teenage cybersecurity researcher, who alleged that the public cloud storage endpoint of the JEE (Advanced) results portal was accessible without authentication, exposing candidate data.
Earlier, IIT Roorkee acknowledged a cloud storage configuration issue affecting the results portal and said the matter was being addressed on priority. The institute also maintained that the data remained in read-only mode with no possibility of record alteration.
Temporary technical issue behind concern
According to IIT Roorkee, the situation arose after certain urgent technical interventions were carried out on June 2 to help candidates facing difficulty accessing admit card data and to ensure smooth functioning of the registration process.
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The institute said these interventions led to a “minimal, temporary misconfiguration” in a cloud storage component. It further clarified that the issue was identified and reported by ethical hacker Rylen Anil.
“An ethical hacker, Mr Rylen Anil, identified this misconfiguration and reported that he could access the concerned database. The issue was immediately rectified, and access to the data was restricted,” the institute said.
Recent exam controversies
The CUET-UG 2026, for admission into undergraduate degree programmes across India, was delayed at some centres due to a technical glitch, the NTA said. The NTA attributed the technical issue to systems managed by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).
The CUET glitch is a second blow for the NTA within weeks. The high-stakes medical entrance test NEET-UG 2026, originally held on May 3, was cancelled amid widespread allegations of paper leaks and structural irregularities.
The Ministry of Education has since ordered a CBI probe and scheduled a re-examination for over 22 lakh aspirants on June 21.
