Should we expect another fiasco in CAT?
By
siliconindia | Thursday, 02 September 2010, 08:08 IST

Mumbai: It is happening again. After last year's debacle in conducting the Common Admission Test (CAT) online, now the CAT website has had a malware bug attack. This comes at a time when the sale of CAT 2010 vouchers and online registration has just started. In this milieu, should we expect another fiasco this year, which has started haunting us way before the exam dates?
People who logged on to the website on 31 August night were met with the warning, 'Visiting this site may harm your computer'. The website provides the management aspirants with important information like details and date of the examination.
Google in its advisory for Mozilla Firefox users said "Of the three pages we tested on the site over the past 90 days, 2 page(s) resulted in malicious software being downloaded and installed without user consent." It went on to say that suspicious content was found on this site on August 31. "Malicious software includes 3 virus, 3 exploit(s), 2 Trojan(s)."
The agency responsible for conducting the exam, Prometric, a U.S. based testing company, said in a statement issued, "A malware was discovered and removed over night. It will take several hours for the warnings to disappear from Google Chrome. As is stated at the bottom of the candidate registration page, we advise candidates to use the following approved browsers: Internet Explorer version 7 or above, or Firefox version 3.0 and above."
However, Prometric provided with another alternative. It recommended people to use the Prometric website, which accepts candidate applications and appointments.
The CAT met similar fate last year when computers crashed in several examination centers due to technical snag. CAT is an all-India test conducted by the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) as an entrance exam for the management programs of its seven business schools.