JEE Advanced 2026: Data breach claims ‘factually incorrect’, say IIT Roorkee, education ministry

Amid the allegations of a data breach involving the personal information of JEE Advanced 2026 aspirants, the exam-conducting body, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, has called the claims circulating online “misleading and factually incorrect.”

Recently, a cybersecurity researcher, Rylen Anil, alleged that student-related data linked to the JEE Advanced 2026 was publicly accessible due to a cloud storage configuration issue that allowed access to students’ data without authentication.

IIT Roorkee later acknowledged that a temporary misconfiguration in a cloud storage component had occurred, but the issue was immediately rectified, and access to the data was restricted.

According to IIT Roorkee, some “technical interventions” were made to help students who were having trouble accessing their admit cards and to ensure the smooth functioning of the registration process. However, these technical fixes caused “minimal and temporary” misconfiguration in a cloud storage component.

The education ministry retweeted IIT Roorkee's post on X. It reiterated that no sensitive information of students was compromised, and the JEE Advanced 2026 exam outcomes, marks, and candidate information remain completely secure and safe.

‘No information compromised’, IIT Roorkee claims

IIT Roorkee claims that the affected cloud storage was “read-only” and that no data could be edited or deleted. After analyzing the access records, it was confirmed that no one downloaded large amounts of data either. Also, only 0.05% of the read-only data was briefly accessible.

“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 IIT Roorkee said in a statement.

The premier institute also assured students ahead of the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA 2026) counselling process, which determines IIT seat allotments, and said:

“IIT Roorkee remains fully committed to maintaining the integrity, security, and transparency of the JEE (Advanced) and JoSAA counselling processes. Deliberate attempts to misrepresent this technical event and undermine public trust in the examination system are deeply concerning and should be discouraged.”

JEE Advanced 2026

IIT Roorkee conducted the JEE Advanced 2026 on May 17, and 56,880 students qualified for the exam. The JEE Advanced 2026 application process was conducted from April 23 to May 2, while the admit cards were available from May 11 to 17.

Shubham Kumar, from the IIT Delhi zone, topped the exam by securing AIR 1 with a score of 330 out of 360 marks. Among female candidates, Arohi Deshpande performed the best, achieving CRL 77 and 280 marks. In terms of zones, IIT Madras stood out: it had the highest number of students in the top 500 rankings (174) and the largest number of qualified candidates overall (14,294).