Exam centre staff, server operator at the helm of rigging test through remote paper solvers, compromised lab network, lapses in manpower deployment, and lack of monitoring — are some of the major lapses flagged by central probing agencies in a report submitted to the National Testing Agency (NTA). This has come nearly a month after a unit of the Uttar Pradesh (UP) police bust a cheating racket at one of the test centres located in a university at Meerut where the CSIR-NET exam was to be conducted in online mode.
According to the report, there are multiple lapses in the procedure, beginning from involvement of the exam centre employees, who breached the computer lab’s server where the exam was to be conducted that day and the entire act remaining unmonitored on part of the university as well as the state and central observers, News18 has learnt.
Investigators found that the server of the computer lab where the exam was being conducted was breached already on the morning of the exam on July 27 when the centre head collected the IP addresses of the computer systems of the candidates and shared them with a “remote paper solver”. It was also found that after students took their seats in the exam hall, one person had physically gone and noted down the IP address of specific candidates, who further informed the exam centre head, who in turn shared it with the solver.
The lab is located at Subharti University, Meerut, which was the designated exam centre.
This was the second time that the CSIR-NET exam was scheduled this year after the previous one was cancelled altogether following reports of paper leaks. The exam conducted in the computer-based mode was scheduled for July 25 and July 27 across cities. It is conducted to determine eligibility for junior research fellowship as well as for assistant professor posts in colleges for science subjects.
News18 had on July 27 reported that the UP police’s Special Task Force (STF) had busted the cheating racket in a raid. The exam was scheduled in two batches on the same day — 9 am to 12 pm, when the police raided the venue and seized the exam server; and the second batch was conducted from 3 pm to 6 pm, using a different server.
The NTA conducts CSIR-Net exam. It has been in the eye of the storm surrounding the conduct of national exams such as NEET-UG, which has courted controversy. Following this, the union Ministry of Education (MoE) set up a seven-member panel to look into the functioning of the NTA.
Lapses at the exam centre
The report highlights that a dedicated CCTV monitoring setup was used by the exam centre head, who gave live instructions to the remote paper solvers on when to start and stop the remote access, News18 gathered.
The state police unit had arrested seven persons after it raided the university premises on the day of the exam that included the exam centre head, the IT manager of the university, a computer lab assistant, a server operator from the firm that facilitates the conduct of the exam and four aspirants. All the four aspirants hail from Madhi village, Haryana. The police said that the gang members were charging huge sums of money to the tune of Rs 15-20 lakh from each aspirant for providing them online solvers to crack the entrance exam.
It is observed in the report that the chief proctor of the university helped the centre head get access of the computer network.
“Also, it found that the exam centre head had arranged an extra computer, with windows OS and Anydesk software installed in it. This system was connected to the Internet as well as to the exam lab network (intranet). The centre head handed over the system to remote solvers by sharing Anydesk password,” said an official privy to the findings of the report.
Anydesk is a Remote desktop software that allows users to access and control devices from anywhere, as if they were using the device locally.
“A day before the exam, a mock test was done at the lab. Before the mock test, remote solvers accessed the Network Boot Pendrive, which is used to boot the student system in the lab,” the official said.
The report observed that there was no network segmentation, which means that the exam server, CCTV systems and all other devices were being operated on the same network.
Gaps in Deploying Manpower
The chief proctor did not know how to identify if a computer system with internet access was connected with the exam lab network. There was no inspection conducted by him of the computer network and the lab premises where the additional computer was kept, said a second official familiar with the matter.
Also, probing agencies found that employees of the firm facilitating the online exam were without identity cards at the exam centre and were involved in collecting IP addresses of the candidates. Besides, the assistant chief proctors were freelancers without any work experience.
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