DailyPost 1805
ONLINE EXAMS – SOPHISTICATED SCAMS
What is not caught from the legal point of view, has not happened. What is online was supposed to be full proof till the time rampant hacks have proved to the world how porous the digital world is. Long time back in one of entrance exams in Karnataka, marks were changed by the outsourced resources at the time of collation and tabulation. Which school certifies the sanctity of the exams conducted in students’ homes, online, during the ongoing pandemic. The Diwali bumper marks speak of the story within. On the human element side, it speaks of the degree to which students and parents are fine with excellent results, a bit of unfair tuning withstanding. We have history of compromised exams in the offline world.
Online exams are both a technological marvel and a technological challenge. Presuming fairness cannot take us places. No one knows the near perfect proctoring tool and the digital proctoring mechanism. What are the cyber security procedures to be gone through before the conduct of the exams. From the exam point of view, what is the threat perception and what remediation mechanisms have been put in place. Is digital surveillance required in a few quarters? What dynamic and real time measures are in place? Can’t we not even make out when an IP address is compromised? Can we not find patterns in abnormal center selection? Do we have data analyzed of earlier exams from a pattern / correlation / anomaly / aberration point of view? To conduct massive online exams, we need a battery of domain experts, conventional IT experts, Cyber Security experts complimented with a superb IT infrastructure.
Physical to digital is not just a change of the medium, it is a different world, as different at least as the modern offline world to the feudal world. The headlines announced ”Exam Center Compromised, Gadgets Hacked, CBI Investigation Reveals How JEE Scam Operated.” The red herring started with the selection of the exam center. The gravity of the situation can be assessed from the possibility that not just one computer system but the entire exam center could have been compromised.” Digital Impersonation with peace of mind and comfort is the new name of the game. Conspirators allegedly remotely took exams on behalf of the students for exchange of money. One exam center computers in Sonepat were remotely controlled by experts in other parts of the country.
The digital and physical criminality coming together can deliver successes, which are one of its kind as we see in the present case. The scene has shifted to the CBI investigation; the accused, modus operandi et al. What about the failure of the system put in the first place and who are responsible for it, otherwise, this would become endemic. Who will audit the current exams to certify that but for this case everything is fine. CBI says that the gadgets at the exam centers may have been hacked. Besides, the crime part of hawala payoffs etc. who will build up the whole digital criminal story of the case or will it be a mix of physical and virtual and a chargesheet, for something similar to happen yet again. Can we set up our digital systems correctly? What if the compromise was done from a foreign land? If we can’t handle the Cyber Security dinosaur, we will end up as lame ducks.
THERE IS NO SECURITY WITHOUT CYBER SECURITY.
Sanjay Sahay