A 19-year old broke into India's largest high school examination system of 2M+ students a year, the CBSE, and was able to view and CHANGE any students' marks.
He responsibly wrote to the team 3 months ago, and it took them 3 days to fix only one of the issues. Today, they took the entire website down.
This is a absolute embarrassment. The futures and lives of millions rests in the hands of the utterly incompetent. There is also no mass media reporting on the matter.
This topic is close to me because not only is this the education system I went through, but 12 years ago and silently for 5yrs since, I'd written about and reported a much less severe vulnerability allowing me to scrape these results too. More than a decade later, not much has changed.
This 19yo, Nisarga Adhikary, wrote a great piece outlining each vulnerability he reverse engineered:
- the master password leak
- the client-side 2fac / OTP validation workaround
- tokenless access to the entire internal app (dashboard, evaluator details, etc) setting dummy browser values
- changing any password without knowing the old one
- an IDOR vuln allowing you to act as any user and edit exam marks
For those interested in a beautiful study in security breaches, this is a must read (link below).
If there's any light at the end of the tunnel, it's that a 19yo who never went to college can do things 99% of top engineers couldn't figure out.
The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen.
Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation).
Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there.
Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI.
As a result,
1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb.
Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more.
2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future).
Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire"
3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed.
Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies.
4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either.
No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money."
I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here.
Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success".
Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.
@IndianOilcl - I booked an LPG refill on 13 March, and the status shows that it was supposed to be delivered on the same day. However, I have still not received the cylinder yet. Could you please check the status and arrange delivery at the earliest?
🚨Breaking: Google just dropped Nano Banana 2.
One of the strongest AI image launches this year.
But 99% of people still don’t know how to actually use it.
So I spent hours testing it and compiled a Nano Banana 2 Prompt Library with 50 powerful prompts + pro techniques for:
• Professional headshots
• Product photography
• Viral thumbnails
• Architecture & interiors
• Image editing & restoration
• Creative surreal scenes
• And much more.
If you want the full prompt library, I’m giving it away for free.
How to get it:
1️⃣ Follow me (must — so I can DM you)
2️⃣ Like + RT this post
3️⃣ Comment “banana” 🍌
I’ll DM the document to everyone who completes the steps.
Let’s make your AI images 10× better.