‘Cyber Mitra’ AI Chatbot launched by Surat Police

Executive Summary

A viral video allegedly featuring cricketer Virat Kohli endorsing a betting app named ‘Aviator’ is being shared widely across the social platform. CyberPeace Research Team’s Investigations revealed that the same has been made using the deepfake technology. In the viral video, we found some potential anomalies that can be said to have been created using Synthetic Media, also no genuine celebrity endorsements for the app exist, we have also previously debunked such Deep Fake videos of cricketer Virat Kohli regarding the misuse of deep fake technology. The spread of such content underscores the need for social media platforms to implement robust measures to combat online scams and misinformation.

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Claims:

The claim made is that a video circulating on social media depicts Indian cricketer Virat Kohli endorsing a betting app called "Aviator." The video features an Indian News channel named India TV, where the journalist reportedly endorses the betting app followed by Virat Kohli's experience with the betting app.

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Fact Check:

Upon receiving the news, we thoroughly watched the video and found some featured anomalies that are usually found in regular deep fake videos such as the lip sync of the journalist is not proper, and if we see it carefully the lips do not match with the audio that we can hear in the Video. It’s the same case when Virat Kohli Speaks in the video.

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We then divided the video into keyframes and reverse searched one of the frames from the Kohli’s part, we found a video similar to the one spread, where we could see Virat Kohli wearing the same brown jacket in that video, uploaded on his verified Instagram handle which is an ad promotion in collaboration with American Tourister. 

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After going through the entire video, it is evident that Virat Kohli is not endorsing any betting app, rather he is talking about an ad promotion collaborating with American Tourister. 

We then did some keyword searches to see if India TV had published any news as claimed in the Viral Video, but we didn’t find any credible source.

Therefore, upon noticing the major anomalies in the video and doing further analysis found that the video was created using Synthetic Media, it's a fake and misleading one.

Conclusion:

The video of Virat Kohli promoting a betting app is fake and does not actually feature the celebrity endorsing the app. This brings up many concerns regarding how Artificial Intelligence is being used for fraudulent activities. Social media platforms need to take action against the spread of fake videos like these.

Claim: Video surfacing on social media shows Indian cricket star Virat Kohli promoting a betting application known as "Aviator."

Claimed on: Facebook

Fact Check: Fake & Misleading

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Executive Summary

The viral video, in which south actor Allu Arjun is seen supporting the Congress Party's campaign for the upcoming Lok Sabha Election, suggests that he has joined Congress Party. Over the course of an investigation, the CyberPeace Research Team uncovered that the video is a close up of Allu Arjun marching as the Grand Marshal of the 2022 India Day parade in New York to celebrate India’s 75th Independence Day. Reverse image searches, Allu Arjun's official YouTube channel, the news coverage, and stock images websites are also proofs of this fact. Thus, it has been firmly established that the claim that Allu Arjun is in a Congress Party's campaign is fabricated and misleading

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Claims:

The viral video alleges that the south actor Allu Arjun is using his popularity and star status as a way of campaigning for the Congress party during the 2024 upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

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Fact Check:

Initially, after hearing the news, we conducted a quick search using keywords to relate it to actor Allu Arjun joining the Congress Party but came across nothing related to this. However, we found a video by SoSouth posted on Feb 20, 2022, of Allu Arjun’s Father-in-law Kancharla Chandrasekhar Reddy joining congress and quitting former chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao's party. 

Next, we segmented the video into keyframes, and then reverse searched one of the images which led us to the Federation of Indian Association website. It says that the picture is from the 2022 India Parade. The picture looks similar to the viral video, and we can compare the two to help us determine if they are from the same event.

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Taking a cue from this, we again performed a keyword search using “India Day Parade 2022”. We found a video uploaded on the official Allu Arjun YouTube channel, and it’s the same video that has been shared on Social Media in recent times with different context. The caption of the original video reads, “Icon Star Allu Arjun as Grand Marshal @ 40th India Day Parade in New York | Highlights | #IndiaAt75”

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The Reverse Image search results in some more evidence of the real fact, we found the image on Shutterstock, the description of the photo reads, “NYC India Day Parade, New York, NY, United States - 21 Aug 2022 Parade Grand Marshall Actor Allu Arjun is seen on a float during the annual Indian Day Parade on Madison Avenue in New York City on August 21, 2022.”

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With this, we concluded that the Claim made in the viral video of Allu Arjun supporting the Lok Sabha Election campaign 2024 is baseless and false.

Conclusion:

The viral video circulating on social media has been put out of context. The clip, which depicts Allu Arjun's participation in the Indian Day parade in 2022, is not related to the ongoing election campaigns for any Political Party.

Hence, the assertion that Allu Arjun is campaigning for the Congress party is false and misleading.

• Claim: A video, which has gone viral, says that actor Allu Arjun is rallying for the Congress party.
• Claimed on: X (Formerly known as Twitter) and YouTube
• Fact Check: Fake & Misleading

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Introduction

Data Breaches have taken over cyberspace as one of the rising issues, these data breaches result in personal data making its way toward cybercriminals who use this data for no good. As netizens, it's our digital responsibility to be cognizant of our data and the data of one's organization. The increase in internet and technology penetration has made people move to cyberspace at a rapid pace, however, awareness regarding the same needs to be inculcated to maximise the data safety of netizens. The recent AIIMS cyber breach has got many organisations worried about their cyber safety and security. According to the HIPPA Journal, 66% of healthcare organizations reported ransomware attacks on them. Data management and security is the prime aspect of clients all across the industry and is now growing into a concern for many. The data is primarily classified into three broad terms-

• Personal Identified Information (PII) - Any representation of information that permits the identity of an individual to whom the information applies to be reasonably inferred by either direct or indirect means.
• Non-Public Information (NPI) - The personal information of an individual that is not and should not be available to the public. This includes Social Security Numbers, bank information, other personal identifiable financial information, and certain transactions with financial institutions.
• Material Non-Public Information (MNPI) - Data relating to a company that has not been made public but could have an impact on its share price. It is against the law for holders of nonpublic material information to use the information to their advantage in trading stocks.

This classification of data allows the industry to manage and secure data effectively and efficiently and at the same time, this allows the user to understand the uses of their data and its intensity in case of breach of data. Organisations process data that is a combination of the above-mentioned classifications and hence in instances of data breach this becomes a critical aspect. Coming back to the AIIMS data breach, it is a known fact that AIIMS is also an educational and research institution. So, one might assume that the reason for any attack on AIIMS could be either to exfiltrate patient data or could be to obtain hands-on the R & D data including research-related intellectual properties. If we postulate the latter, we could also imagine that other educational institutes of higher learning such as IITs, IISc, ISI, IISERs, IIITs, NITs, and some of the significant state universities could also be targeted. In 2021, the Ministry of Home Affairs through the Ministry of Education sent a directive to IITs and many other institutes to take certain steps related to cyber security measures and to create SoPs to establish efficient data management practices. The following sectors are critical in terms of data protection-

• Health sector
• Financial sector
• Education sector
• Automobile sector

These sectors are generally targeted by bad actors and often data breach from these sectors result in cyber crimes as the data is soon made available on Darkweb. These institutions need to practice compliance like any other corporate house as the end user here is the netizen and his/her data is of utmost importance in terms of protection.Organisations in today's time need to be in coherence to the advancement in cyberspace to find out keen shortcomings and vulnerabilities they may face and subsequently create safeguards for the same. The AIIMS breach is an example to learn from so that we can protect other organisations from such cyber attacks. To showcase strong and impenetrable cyber security every organisation should be able to answer these questions-

• Do you have a centralized cyber asset inventory?
• Do you have human resources that are trained to model possible cyber threats and cyber risk assessment?
• Have you ever undertaken a business continuity and resilience study of your institutional digitalized business processes?
• Do you have a formal vulnerability management system that enumerates vulnerabilities in your cyber assets and a patch management system that patches freshly discovered vulnerabilities?
• Do you have a formal configuration assessment and management system that checks the configuration of all your cyber assets and security tools (firewalls, antivirus management, proxy services) regularly to ensure they are most securely configured?
• Do have a segmented network such that your most critical assets (servers, databases, HPC resources, etc.) are in a separate network that is access-controlled and only people with proper permission can access?
• Do you have a cyber security policy that spells out the policies regarding the usage of cyber assets, protection of cyber assets, monitoring of cyber assets, authentication and access control policies, and asset lifecycle management strategies?
• Do you have a business continuity and cyber crisis management plan in place which is regularly exercised like fire drills so that in cases of exigencies such plans can easily be followed, and all stakeholders are properly trained to do their part during such emergencies?
• Do you have multi-factor authentication for all users implemented?
• Do you have a supply chain security policy for applications that are supplied by vendors? Do you have a vendor access policy that disallows providing network access to vendors for configuration, updates, etc?
• Do you have regular penetration testing of the cyberinfrastructure of the organization with proper red-teaming?
• Do you have a bug-bounty program for students who could report vulnerabilities they discover in your cyber infrastructure and get rewarded?
• Do you have an endpoint security monitoring tool mandatory for all critical endpoints such as database servers, application servers, and other important cyber assets?
• Do have a continuous network monitoring and alert generation tool installed?
• Do you have a comprehensive cyber security strategy that is reflected in your cyber security policy document?
• Do you regularly receive cyber security incidents (including small, medium, or high severity incidents, network scanning, etc) updates from your cyber security team in order to ensure that top management is aware of the situation on the ground?
• Do you have regular cyber security skills training for your cyber security team and your IT/OT engineers and employees?
• Do your top management show adequate support, and hold the cyber security team accountable on a regular basis?
• Do you have a proper and vetted backup and restoration policy and practice?

If any organisation has definite answers to these questions, it is safe to say that they have strong cyber security, these questions should not be taken as a comparison but as a checklist by various organisations to be up to date in regard to the technical measures and policies related to cyber security. Having a strong cyber security posture does not drive the cyber security risk to zero but it helps to reduce the risk and improves the fighting chance. Further, if a proper risk assessment is regularly carried out and high-risk cyber assets are properly protected, then the damages resulting from cyber attacks can be contained to a large extent.