A 17-year-old schoolboy just exposed serious security loopholes and workflow flaws in CBSE’s OSM portal. Here’s the thing, anyone could have built it. You don’t need a computer science degree or a team of software professionals, the issues are that fundamental. And this won’t be an isolated case. With a little time and due diligence, most government portals would likely reveal similar flaws. This is what happens when the government is run by people who lack basic literacy, when contracts are awarded to friends and family, and the priority is making money. This isn’t the first time. An IIT engineer once pointed out how mediocre the IRCTC website was, built an alternative app, and ended up being imprisoned. A startup with no real capability copied the entire code of Brave browser, so sloppily that they forgot to remove Brave’s name and yet was awarded ₹75 lakh as first prize by MEITY. We saw the Galgotia robot fiasco. We saw IIT Madras advertise its “indigenous” ShaktiDB, whose code was lifted from open-source PostgreSQL. EPFO, RTO, IT - pick any sarkari portal. This is what happens in a country when accountability is replaced by connections, and competence is optional.
