JEE Advanced 2026 data breach claims rejected; IIT Roorkee says results and candidate records remain secure

New Delhi: The Union Education Ministry on Friday dismissed allegations of data breach in Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced) results, deprecating attempts to undermine public trust in the examination conducted by IIT Roorkee for more than 1.79 lakh students.

In a message on social media platform X, the Ministry said, "There have been several misleading and factually incorrect reports regarding data breach and privacy violations with respect to students who took JEE (Advanced) examination."

"As per the clarification issued by IIT Roorkee, the Ministry reiterates that no sensitive information was compromised, and the examination outcomes, marks, and candidate information remain completely secure, intact, and safe," it added.

IIT Roorkee also assuaged concerns of admission seekers and their parents by junking claims about the alleged breach of data made on social media.

It said that deliberate attempts to misrepresent a technical event and undermine public trust in the examination system are "deeply concerning" and should be discouraged.

The JEE Advanced exam is the qualifying exam for aspirants seeking admission to 23 premier Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

The IIT Roorkee on social media said, "Claims of a data breach and privacy violation affecting lakhs of JEE (Advanced) aspirants are misleading and factually incorrect."

"The information circulating on social media is misleading and does not accurately reflect what happened. There is an attempt at spreading misinformation, which is far from the truth," IIT Roorkee added.

"On June 2, 2026, certain technical interventions were undertaken on an expedited basis to assist candidates experiencing difficulties in accessing admit card data and to ensure the smooth functioning of the registration process. These interventions resulted in a minimal, temporary misconfiguration in a cloud storage component," it said.

"An ethical hacker, Rylen Anil, identified this misconfiguration and reported that he could access the concerned database. The issue was immediately rectified and access to the data was restricted. The affected storage was read only, meaning no data could be edited or deleted. An analysis of cloud access logs confirmed that no bulk download occurred (the read-only access was limited to less than 0.05 per cent of the data)," the Institute said.

"No sensitive information was compromised or mass-extracted. This incident had zero impact on examination outcomes, including marks, ranks, and category of the candidates," the Institute added.

"IIT Roorkee remains fully committed to maintaining the integrity, security, and transparency of the JEE (Advanced) and Joint Seat Allocation Authority counselling processes," it said.

"Deliberate attempts to misrepresent this technical event and undermine public trust in the examination system are deeply concerning and should be discouraged. The JEE (Advanced) team looks forward to supporting every aspirant through a smooth and secure admission process into IITs and IISc," the Institute added.

The rumours over JEE Advanced have come close to the National Testing Agency's earlier decision to cancel the NEET-UG 2026 due to a exam paper leak and schedule a re-examination on June 21.

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