This is a case study in how India’s entire vulnerability disclosure framework is structurally broken.
Let me explain;
The first broken piece is the legal trap.
When Nisarga “hacked” CBSE, he technically violated Section 66 of the IT Act, which criminalises unauthorised access to a computer system.
There is no carve-out for security research in Indian law. None. The fact that he reported responsibly to CERT-In gives him zero legal protection on paper. The only thing standing between him and prosecution right now is CBSE choosing not to file a complaint.
Compare with the US.
The DOJ formally announced in 2022 that “good faith security research” will not be prosecuted under the CFAA. The UK has similar protections. The Netherlands codifies it. Singapore has formal coordinated vulnerability disclosure policies.
India has none of this. Every researcher who reports a flaw is literally betting that the affected department is nice enough not to retaliate.
Because of this, the best Indian security researchers work for foreign bug bounty programs like HackerOne and Bugcrowd because the legal risk of reporting to Indian government systems is too high.
They find Indian vulnerabilities and stay quiet. We have no idea how many critical flaws exist in our digital infrastructure right now that researchers have spotted but won’t report.
The second broken piece is CERT-In itself.
CERT-In is mandated as India’s nodal cybersecurity body but operates with three structural disadvantages most people don’t know about.
It has no enforcement authority. It can issue advisories. It can recommend patches. It cannot force a government department to fix anything. CBSE could ignore CERT-In for the next 5 years and there’s no mechanism to compel action.
Its budget is roughly Rs 700 crore annually. For comparison, the UK’s NCSC operates with Rs 5,800 crore. The US CISA operates with Rs 25,000+ crore. India’s cyber defence per citizen spend is one of the lowest among G20 countries.
The 2022 CERT-In directive that required companies to report incidents within 6 hours and store logs for 180 days generated huge industry pushback because the timeline was unrealistic.
The directive remains active but enforcement has been patchy. It’s the opposite problem from CBSE. Over-regulation of the private sector, under-regulation of the public sector.
The third broken piece is the architectural mistake repeated across every system.
CBSE OSM had a 17-year-old find authentication bypass. Aadhaar had multiple leaks in 2018, 2019, 2023. CoWIN had a Telegram bot in 2023 pulling personal data using phone numbers. The Income Tax e-filing portal had multiple authentication issues during its 2021 relaunch.
The common thread is the same architectural mistake.
Government tech is built via tender. Lowest bidder wins.
Security is treated as a nice-to-have. Systems go live with 6-month delivery deadlines and 1-month security audits. Patches happen reactively.
We are investing heavily in our digital infrastructure. DIGIPIN is rolling out across India.
Account Aggregator framework is integrating banking, insurance, mutual funds, and credit data into a single financial data exchange layer.
ONDC is integrating thousands of small businesses and consumers.
Each of these systems is bigger than CBSE OSM, but our approach to this is tepid.
Israel pays its top security researchers Rs 1-3 crore packages through Unit 8200 and post-military startups. The talent stays in country and builds Check Point, Cyberark, Wiz, Palo Alto Networks.
India trains 1.5 lakh cybersecurity engineers annually and exports most of them.
The US runs Hack the Pentagon and Hack the Army, where they invite ethical hackers to legally test the most sensitive systems and pay $5,000-$50,000 bounties
India’s version is closed-loop and opaque. We have no equivalent for Defence, Income Tax, or any major department.
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I had hacked CBSE's OSM (On-Screen Marking Portal) in February and had reported the vulnerabilities to CERT-In, but they were unable to patch most of them.
I've written a detailed blog post about it here:
ni5arga.com/blog/posts/hacki…