No wasted effort: When Railways retrieved gold chain from poop

Agencies
July 30, 2017

New Delhi, Jul 30: During his two-decade-long career with the Indian Railways, station master Anil Kumar Shukla has helped passengers in multiple ways. He has now added retrieving a gold chain from poop to his list of accomplishments.

Shukla, currently posted at the Yeola station - about 35 kilometres from Shirdi and 260 kilometres northeast of Mumbai - got a call on July 16, informing him that a passenger had dropped a gold chain in the toilet of a train passing through his station.

"It was an unusual call, no doubt about that," laughed Shukla when contacted by news agency. "I rushed out when a passenger stopped the train and said he had dropped his gold chain into the toilet and wanted us to find it," said Shukla.

The gold chain weighed 50 grams, said its owner, Dr Chavan Patil, an orthopaedic surgeon, and was worth Rs 1.5 lakh.

"It is a lot of money to flush down the drain," said Patil, who was travelling from Nonand to Manmad in Maharashtra by the Maharashtra Express on July 16 and dropped his chain while changing his shirt at the Yeola station, which falls on the Ahmednagar-Manmad rail route.

The doctor sought help from the officials and his expectations weren't misplaced. The Railways, after all, had in recent times taken a slew of measures to meet passenger needs - from delivering medicines, wheelchairs, food and blankets to retrieving phones and laptops left behind.

However, this time, the Railways' helping hand could literally stink from the effort.

"After I pulled the chain to stop the train, the guard and station master came to help me out. However, they said they couldn't do much because the toilet was bio-tech and could be opened only by the cleaning crew at Kolhapur. They asked me to go to Kolhapur and make enquiries," Patil said.

Patil, however, went home to Phaltan, around six hours from Yeola -- and then his tech-savy daughter took over.

On July 18, she posted a tweet, urging Rail Minister Suresh Prabhu to intervene in the matter.

The minister replied in 10 minutes.

"I have given orders to concerned department to do the needful," he tweeted.In half an hour, Patil got a call from the Pune Railway station chief, asking him about the lost chain.

"He asked me to go to Kolhapur the next day. I did, and learnt the toilet was not bio-tech but the usual one," he said.

So, the chain, they realised, had fallen through the hole in the Indian style toilet at Yeola station.

It was then that station master Shukla received his second "unusual call" in as many days.

Informed that the chain was somewhere on the tracks of his station, Shukla, along with his staff, scoured an area of around two kilometres. To compound matters, it was also raining heavily that day. And then he spotted something jutting out of the pebbles.

"We used a wire to pull it out. Yes, it was dirty and covered in filth, but nothing a good wash couldn't get rid of," he said.

A heavy-duty wash under a tap at the station later, the chain finally made it to the hands of its very persistent owner, three days after it went down a black hole.

It is, however, not clear if Patil wore the chain immediately on its return! But what's known is that the effort that went into locating the chain wasn't quite a waste.

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Agencies
March 10,2020

New Delhi, Mar 10: Crisis-hit Yes Bank on Tuesday said that it has enabled inward IMPS and NEFT services.

The move allows people to send money from other bank accounts to their Yes Bank account through IMPS (Immediate Payment Service) and NEFT (National Electronic Funds Transfer) mode.

In a tweet, the bank also said that Yes Bank customers can pay their credit card dues and loan obligations from other bank accounts.

"Inward IMPS/NEFT services have now been enabled. You can make payments towards YES BANK Credit Card dues and loan obligations from other bank accounts. Thank you for your co-operation. @RBIA @FinMinIndia," said tweet.

Last week Yes Bank was placed under moratorium and a withdrawal cap of Rs 50,000 was imposed till April 3.

The administrator of Yes Bank, Prashant Kumar and Rajnish Kumar, the Chairman of the State Bank of India are hopeful that moratorium would be lifted within a week.

As per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) draft reconstruction scheme for the crisis-hit private lender, the SBI will take up 49 per cent in the bank by investing Rs 2,450 crore.

The new board of directors will stand constituted from the appointed date. It will comprise a CEO and MD, non-executive chairman and non-executive directors. The SBI will have nominee directors appointed on the board of the reconstructed bank.

The RBI may appoint additional directors to the board, who shall continue in office for one year, or until an alternate board is constituted by Yes Bank.

The SBI will not reduce its holding below 26 per cent before completion of three years from the date of infusion of the capital.

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Agencies
May 19,2020

Cybersecurity researchers on Monday warned of a Trojan malware campaign which is targeting India's co-operative banks using COVID-19 as a bait.

Seqrite, the enterprise arm of IT security firm Quick Heal Technologies, detected the new wave of Adwind Java Remote Access Trojan (RAT) campaign.

Researchers at Seqrite warned that if attackers are successful, they can take over the victim's device to steal sensitive data like SWIFT logins and customer details and move laterally to launch large scale cyberattacks and financial frauds.

According to the researchers, the Java RAT campaign starts with a spear-phishing email which claims to have originated from either the Reserve Bank of India or a nationalised bank.

The content of the email refers to COVID-19 guidelines or a financial transaction, with detailed information in an attachment, which is a zip file containing a JAR based malware.

Upon further investigation, researchers at Seqrite found that the JAR based malware is a Remote Access Trojan that can run on any machine which has Java runtime enabled and hence it can impact a variety of endpoints, irrespective of their base operating system.

Once the RAT is installed, the attacker can take over the victim's device, send commands from a remote machine, and spread laterally in the network.

In addition, this malware can also log keystrokes, capture screenshots, download additional payloads, and extract sensitive user information, Seqrite said, adding that such attack campaigns can effectively jeopardise the privacy and security of sensitive data at the co-operative banks and result in large scale attacks and financial frauds.

To prevent such attacks, users need to exercise ample caution and avoid opening attachments and clicking on web links in unsolicited emails.

Banks should also keep their operating systems updated and have a full-fledged security solution installed on all the devices, Seqrite advised.

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Agencies
March 15,2020

Cybercriminals continue to exploit public fear of rising coronavirus cases through malware and phishing emails in the guise of content coming from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the US and World Health Organisation (WHO), says cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.

In the APAC region, Kaspersky has detected 93 coronavirus-related malware in Bangladesh, 53 in the Philippines, 40 in China, 23 in Vietnam, 22 in India and 20 in Malaysia. 

Single-digit detections were monitored in Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Myanmar, and Thailand. 

Along with the consistent increase of 2019 coronavirus cases comes the incessant techniques cybercriminals are using to prey on public panic amidst the global epidemic, the company said in a statement. 

Kaspersky also detected emails offering products such as masks, and then the topic became more commonly used in Nigerian spam emails. Researchers also found scam emails with phishing links and malicious attachments.

One of the latest spam campaigns mimics the World Health Organisation (WHO), showing how cybercriminals recognise and are capitalising on the important role WHO has in providing trustworthy information about the coronavirus.

"We would encourage companies to be particularly vigilant at this time, and ensure employees who are working at home exercise caution. 

"Businesses should communicate clearly with workers to ensure they are aware of the risks, and do everything they can to secure remote access for those self-isolating or working from home," commented David Emm, principal security researcher.

Some malicious files are spread via email. 

For example, an Excel file distributed via email under the guise of a list of coronavirus victims allegedly sent from the World Health Organisation (WHO) was, in fact, a Trojan-Downloader, which secretly downloads and installs another malicious file. 

This second file was a Trojan-Spy designed to gather various data, including passwords, from the infected device and send it to the attacker.

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