IIT-Roorkee has rejected allegations of a large-scale data breach, involving JEE (Advanced) aspirants, saying claims circulating on social media were “misleading and factually incorrect”.The controversy emerged after reports claimed that candidate data linked to JEE (Advanced), 2026, had been exposed due to a security lapse. The issue reportedly came to light after an ethical hacker identified a temporary cloud storage misconfiguration and reported it to the authorities, prompting concerns over the privacy of aspirants.Responding to the allegations, IIT-Roorkee, the organising institute for JEE (Advanced), 2026, said the incident has been misrepresented.In a statement posted on X, the institute said, “Claims of a data breach and privacy violation affecting lakhs of JEE (Advanced) aspirants are misleading and factually incorrect.”According to IIT Roorkee, the issue occurred on June 2 during technical interventions aimed at helping candidates facing difficulties in accessing admit card data and ensuring the smooth functioning of the registration process.The institute said, “These interventions resulted in a minimal, temporary misconfiguration in a cloud storage component. An ethical hacker, Rylen Anil, identified this misconfiguration and reported that he could access the database concerned. The issue was immediately rectified and access to the data was restricted.”Addressing concerns over the scale of the incident, IIT-Roorkee said, “The affected storage was in 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% of the data).”The institute maintained that no sensitive information had been compromised. “No sensitive information was compromised or mass extracted. This incident had zero impact on examination outcomes, including marks, ranks, and category of the candidates,” it clarified.Reaffirming its commitment to the admission process, IIT-Roorkee said it remained dedicated to maintaining the integrity, security and transparency of the JEE (Advanced) and JoSAA counselling processes, while cautioning against attempts to undermine public trust in the examination system.