Nisarga Adhikary, a 19-year-old coding prodigy from Siliguri, has officially joined IIT Kanpur’s C3iHub as an Open Source Intelligence and Threat Intelligence Engineer. The teenager gained national attention after discovering critical security flaws within the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) on-screen marking system. His findings, which he reported to India’s Computer Emergency Response Team, highlighted a major cloud storage configuration error that allowed unauthorized access to sensitive exam materials, a vulnerability he famously described as simple enough to bypass with basic logic rather than complex programming.

Prof. Manindra Agrawal, Director of IIT Kanpur, praised Adhikary’s technical prowess and expressed confidence in his future contributions to the institute’s cybersecurity initiatives. While Adhikary has been coding since the age of six and participating in security competitions since middle school, he views this new role as a significant transition from his past work as a software developer. Although he is eager to dive into this security-focused career, Adhikary maintains a long-term ambition of launching his own startups rather than pursuing a traditional path in academia.