Chandigarh Ut Portal Sans Basic Encryption As College Admission Begins

UT s centralised e-admission portal, used by thousands of students and parents to apply for college seats across the region, has allegedly been running on an unencrypted HTTP connection for several months, leaving sensitive personal and academic data exposed t... UT’s centralised e-admission portal, used by thousands of students and parents to apply for college seats across the region, has allegedly been running on an unencrypted HTTP connection for several months, leaving sensitive personal and academic data exposed to potential interception, a formal complaint to the UT education department has revealed. The college admissions through the portal (dhe.chd.gov.in/eAdmission) are scheduled to commence on June 1, with the complainant warning that students and parents are being forced to submit sensitive personal information, including names, contact details and passwords on a platform without basic security protocols. The complaint warned that this violates students and parents’ fundamental Right to Privacy guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution. With admissions commencing today, thousands of applicants across Chandigarh are expected to log on to the portal, enter personal details and create accounts, all over an unencrypted connection that experts warn leaves data vulnerable to interception by malicious actors. The complaint also flagged a direct contradiction with the Union ministry of home affairs’ own cybersecurity guidelines. The MHA’s Handbook on Cyber Safety for Students advises users to only share information on websites beginning with HTTPS, warning that sites without it leave data vulnerable to theft and tampering — a standard the UT’s own admission portal currently fails to meet. The complainant demanded the portal be immediately secured with HTTPS or that a secure physical alternative be provided to applicants unwilling to risk their data on the unencrypted platform. When contacted, UT’s information technology director Avikesh Gupta said a quick fix is not possible. He acknowledged that implementing SSL, the security layer that enables HTTPS, is currently not feasible on the admission server as the application runs on legacy infrastructure. An upgrade of the State Data Centre is already underway and is expected to take another three to four months, after which the portal will be migrated and secured, he said. “The portal is not without safeguards. Adequate safeguards have been incorporated in the application through application-level and database-level encryption to ensure the security and confidentiality of applicant data,” he added. UT s centralised e-admission portal, used by thousands of students and parents to apply for college seats across the region, has allegedly been running on an unencrypted HTTP...