E-Paper
Online UG exams: Allahabad University suspects ‘cyber attack’ behind sever crash, initiates probe
AU administration says that it is collecting all relevant proofs following which legal proceeding would be initiated in respect to this “cybercrime”
After the cancellation of the year-ending online undergraduate final year exams on two consecutive days (June 14 and 15) due to crashing of its website, the Allahabad University voluntarily cancelled the exam on Thursday. Following this incident, the authorities are of the opinion that the varsity’s official website was ‘deliberately attacked’ by someone who wanted to sabotage the system through which the online exams were being conducted since June 7.
AU administration says that it is collecting all relevant proofs following which legal proceeding would be initiated in respect to this “cybercrime”.
AU has found that the server had crashed because of unprecedented hits. This year, the varsity had decided to conduct the exams of UG final year students in online mode and the exams were based on Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) pattern. For conducting the exams, the appointed agency had made provision for around 38,000 hits against around mere 2000 students. But it was found that during the last two days (June 14 and June 15), there were around 1.8 lakh hits which resulted in website getting crashed, informed varsity officials.
“Within minutes of the starting of the exam, there was a sudden spike in number of hits which led to crashing of the server of the website which was equipped to handle 38000 hits against around 2000 students. However, the numbers of hits were around 80,000 in the first few minutes of the commencement of exam and again the second spike was of over 1 lakh hits on the affected days,” said AU public relation officer (PRO), Prof Jaya Kapoor.
We are quite certain that someone is trying to sabotage the system purposely as even if a student uses multiple options to login for appearing in the exam, the numbers cannot be so huge. This hints to just one option that someone is sabotaging the system, she said.
“We are collecting all the relevant proofs following which legal proceedings would be initiated in respect to the cybercrime,” said the PRO.
She further informed that a similar act could have caused the server to crash on earlier occasion when a section of students were deprived of taking the online exams.
“Going by the earlier experience, this time, the agency was well equipped and had in fact increased the capacity by many times and for around 2000 students, the server was equipped to handle 38000 hits. But, we failed to foresee the cyber attack which eventually led to the crash of the server and we had to postpone the exams”, said Prof Kapoor.
However, AU and the agency has now taken several measures so as to check any further attempts to sabotage online exams and the exams, scheduled for June 17 and further, would be held smoothly, she assured.
