Operation Real Mango | UPSC
HEADLINES:
In a nation wide investigation, RPF disrupts the operation of illegal software called “Real Mango” used for cornering confirmed Railway reservation
WHY IN NEWS:
The software has now been fully decimated
SYLLABUS COVERED: GS 3: Railways : Cyber Security
LEARNING:
For PRELIMS go through the important features of this software .
For MAINS you can use this as an example of security breach in answers related to security or cyber security etc .
ISSUE:
OPERATION REAL MANGO
In a nation wide investigation,
- In view of the apprehension of increase in touting activity after restart of the passenger services, drive against touts was intensified by Railway Protection Force (RPF) of Indian Railways.
REAL MANGO
- It was revealed on 09.08.2020 during action against touts by the field units of RPF.
- RPF units of North Central Railway (NCR), Eastern Railway (ER) and Western Railway (WR) apprehended some suspects.
- The process was initiated by understanding and unravelling the operation of RareMango/Real Mango Software.
SOFTWARE FEATURES
In course of systematic unravelling of the working of the illegal software, it has been found that:-
- Real mango software bypasses V3 and V2 captcha.
- It synchronises bank OTP with help of a mobile app and feeds it to the requisite form automatically.
- The software auto-fills the passenger details and payment details in the forms.
- The software logs in to the IRCTC website through multiple IRCTC Ids.
- The illegal software is sold through five tiered structure: System Admin & his team, Mavens, Super sellers, Sellers and Agents.
DETECTION
- Field units of RPF have been able to apprehend 50 criminals so far including the King pin (system developer) .
- Five key operatives of the illegal software have been arrested from West Bengal.
- The software has now been fully decimated.
IASbhai WINDUP:
- It may be noted a coordinated nation-wide action by RPF between December 2019 to March 2020 led to arrest of 104 criminals involved .
- The information supplied by RPF helped CRIS/IRCTC to strengthen security features in PRS system due to which the softwares stopped functioning at that time.
SOURCES: PIB | Operation Real Mango | UPSC

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