Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee on Friday dismissed allegations of a data breach affecting lakhs of JEE (Advanced) aspirants, describing claims circulating on social media as “misleading and factually incorrect”.
In a statement posted on X, the institute said the incident stemmed from a temporary technical misconfiguration during efforts to address admit card access issues and streamline the registration process, and did not compromise sensitive candidate information.
“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,” IIT Roorkee said.
The institute explained that on June 2, technical interventions were carried out on an expedited basis to assist candidates facing difficulties in accessing admit card data and to ensure smooth registration procedures. During the process, a temporary misconfiguration occurred in a cloud storage component.
According to IIT Roorkee, the issue was identified and responsibly disclosed by ethical hacker Rylen Anil, who reported being able to access the concerned database. The institute said the vulnerability was immediately rectified and access to the data was restricted.
It clarified that the affected storage was configured as read-only, meaning information could neither be altered nor 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,” the institute said.
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IIT Roorkee further stated that no sensitive information was compromised or mass-extracted and stressed that the incident had no impact on examination outcomes, including candidates’ marks, ranks or categories.
“This incident had zero impact on examination outcomes, including marks, ranks, and categories of the candidates,” it added.
The institute reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining the integrity and security of the JEE (Advanced) examination and the Joint Seat Allocation Authority counselling process.
“IIT Roorkee remains fully committed to maintaining the integrity, security, and transparency of the JEE (Advanced) and JoSAA counselling processes,” the statement said.
The institute also expressed concern over what it termed deliberate attempts to misrepresent the incident and undermine public confidence in the examination system.
It said the JEE (Advanced) team remained focused on supporting aspirants through a secure and seamless admission process into the IITs and the Indian Institute of Science.
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