Health ministry identifies 170 corona hotspots in India

May 18: Goldman Sachs expects India will experience its deepest recession ever after a poor run of data underscored the damaging economic impact of lockdowns in the world’s second-most populous nation.

Gross domestic product will contract by an annualized 45% in the second quarter from the prior three months, compared with Goldman’s previous forecast of a 20% slump. A stronger rebound of 20% is now seen for the third quarter, while projections for the fourth quarter and first of next year are unchanged at 14% and 6.5%.

Those estimates imply that real GDP will fall by 5% in the 2021 fiscal year, which would be deeper than any other recession India has ever experienced, Goldman economists Prachi Mishra and Andrew Tilton wrote in a note dated May 17.

India’s government has extended its nationwide lockdown until May 31, while further easing restrictions in certain sectors to boost economic activity, as coronavirus cases escalate across the country. The announcement followed Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s fifth briefing in as many days, in which she outlined details of the country’s $265 billion virus rescue package, which is equivalent to 10% of India’s GDP.

 “There have been a series of structural reform announcements across several sectors over the past few days,” the Goldman economists wrote. “These reforms are more medium-term in nature, and we, therefore, do not expect these to have an immediate impact on reviving growth. We will continue to monitor their implementation to gauge their effect on the medium-term outlook.”

Infections are surging across the South Asian nation of 1.3 billion people, with more than 91,300 infections, including 2,897 deaths as of Sunday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

In a startling revelation, cybersecurity researchers have claimed that a hacker has posted personal details of nearly 2.9 crore Indian job seekers at one of the hacking forums on the Dark Web for free.

As part of the regular sweep over the Deep Web and Dark Web, researchers from cybersecurity firm Cyble came across an interesting item, where a threat actor posted 2.3GB (zipped) file on one of the hacking forums.

"The leak actually has a lot of personal details of millions of Indians Job seekers from different states," Cyble said in its blog on Friday.

This breach includes sensitive information such as email, phone, home address, qualification and work experience etc from job seekers spanning across states, from New Delhi to Mumbai and Bengaluru. 

Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for such personal information to conduct various nefarious activities such as identity thefts, scams, and corporate espionage.

"It appears to have originated from a resume aggregator service given the sheer volume and detailed information," it added.

Cyble indexed this information at ‘AmIbreached.com; – Cyble's data breach monitoring and notification platform.

Cyble researchers have identified a sensitive data breach on the dark web where an actor has leaked personal details of nearly 29 million Indian job seekers from various states. 

"Cyble's team is still investigating this further and will be updating their article as they bring more facts to the surface,” it said in a statement.

Cyble said it has acquired the leaked data. 

The same cyber security firm earlier exposed that Bengaluru-based edtech firm Unacademy was hacked.

According to Cyble researchers, nearly 22 million Unacademy user accounts were affected and the data was dumped and sold on Dark Web.

'We would like to assure our users that no sensitive information such as financial data or location has been breached," said Hemesh Singh, Co- Founder and CTO, Unacademy, in a statement.

In April, hackers sold personal data of a whopping 267 million Facebook users for just Rs 41,500 (approximately 500 Euros) that includes email addresses, names, Facebook IDs, dates of birth and phone numbers.

No passwords of the 267 million Facebook users were exposed by the hacker, according to Cyble.

Mumbai, Mar 8: A day after the Enforcement Directorate registered a money laundering case against Yes Bank founder Rana Kapoor and raided his premises, he was taken to the agency's office in Mumbai on Saturday for further questioning.

Kapoor, who was grilled by central agency's officials on Friday night at his Samudra Mahal residence in Mumbai, was shifted to the ED office in the metropolis around 12.30 pm.

ED officials said Kapoor was questioned throughout the night, with some rest time.

A senior ED official connected with the probe told IANS: "Kapoor will be questioned about Yes Bank loans to Dewan Housing Finance Limited (DHFL)."

The official said that during searches a lot of incriminating documents were found and the agency wanted to grill him on his links with DHFL promoters and other companies.

Kapoor's alleged role in the disbursal of loan to a corporate entity and kickbacks reportedly received in his wife's bank account are also under probe.

The ED had filed the money laundering case against Kapoor and raided his residence, apart from issuing a look-out circular so that he does not flee the country.

The ED registered a money laundering case against Kapoor as a continuation of its probe against the DHFL wherein it was allegedly found that Rs 12,500 crore was diverted to 80 shell companies using one lakh fake borrowers. The transactions with these shell companies date back to 2015.

An ED official in New Delhi told IANS that the DHFL probe revealed that funds diverted by the DHFL originated from Yes Bank.

He said that the searches at Kapoor's residence on Friday night were meant to find out any irregularity in grant of loans to the DHFL by the Yes Bank.

The ED has accused Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan of DHFL of purchasing shares in five firms -- Faith Realtors, Marvel Township, Abe Realty, Poseidon Realty, and Random Realtors -- after which they were amalgamated with Sunblink.

The outstanding loans of these five firms, totalling around Rs 2,186 crore till July 2019, were allegedly appropriated onto the books of Sunblink to cover up the diversion of loans acquired from DHFL.

The ED's action comes after the RBI superseded Yes Bank Board for 30 days and appointed an administrator, putting a cap of Rs 50,000 on withdrawals by account holders for a month.

The RBI said that the bank's board was superseded "owing to serious deterioration in the financial position of the bank".

Former SBI CFO Prashant Kumar was appointed as administrator of Yes Bank, which has over 1,000 branches and 1,800-plus ATMs across the country.

On Thursday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the bank was on watch since 2017 and developments relating to it were monitored on a day-to-day basis.