#FactCheck : Edited video falsely claims Dr. Vikas Divyakirti targeted Narendra Modi
Executive Summary
A video circulating on social media shows Dr. Vikas Divyakirti speaking during a podcast, where he is heard saying, “Those who cannot even memorise and speak four sentences are considered the greatest in India.” Several users are sharing the clip claiming that the remark was aimed at Narendra Modi. However, a research by CyberPeace found the claim to be misleading. The research revealed that the viral clip has been edited and shared out of context. In the original video, Divyakirti made the remarks in reference to film stars, not the Prime Minister.
Claim
On Facebook, a user shared the viral clip with an English caption alleging that Divyakirti criticised Modi, saying he cannot speak without a teleprompter or scripted interviews and has built a false image of greatness.
Similarly, another user shared the video on X, suggesting that people who cannot speak without a teleprompter are still considered great in India, indirectly linking the remark to Modi.
Fact Check
To verify the claim, we extracted keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search using Google Lens. This led us to the original video uploaded on the official YouTube channel of Raj Shamani.
At around the 3:55 mark, the same clip can be seen. During the conversation, Shamani asks whether building a larger-than-life perception actually benefits an individual. Responding to this, Dr. Vikas Divyakirti explains that film stars often have an exaggerated public image. He notes that many of the dialogues they are praised for are not written by them, but by others, and some even rely on teleprompters while speaking. He further adds that there are individuals who cannot even memorise and deliver four sentences or think independently, yet are regarded as great in India. He also mentions that many social media personalities use teleprompters, but audiences remain unaware and assume they possess exceptional knowledge.
Conclusion
The viral claim is misleading. The video has been edited and shared out of context. Dr. Vikas Divyakirti was referring to film stars and social media personalities, not Narendra Modi.
Related Blogs
I. The Principles Laid Down
In addition to commemorating twenty years of an unexpected alliance, the leaders of eleven countries gathered in Bharat Mandapam this September for the 18th BRICS Summit in an effort to codify a worldview. The 140-point New Delhi Declaration, which was unanimously adopted on September 12, 2026, with the theme "Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability," is based on a few enduring principles: respect for one another, sovereign equality, solidarity, democracy, openness, inclusivity, cooperation, and consensus.
Although these terms are not new to the BRICS lexicon, their emphasis this year felt very deliberate. Through the BRICS Leaders' Statement on the Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence, the Declaration formally incorporated artificial intelligence into its agenda, pushed for fair geographic representation in the UN Secretariat and other multilateral organisations, and demanded a realignment of shareholding at international financial institutions to address the historical under-representation of the Global South. It called for compatible international standards on supply-chain security and addressed ICT security, cybercrime, data protection, and the growing threat of deepfakes and disinformation. Leaders highlighted the condemnation of terrorism, particularly the Pahalgam incident, as a collective zero-tolerance position. Taken together, these are not merely diplomatic courtesies, they are the scaffolding of an alternative vision for how a multipolar world might govern itself.
II. The Conversation That Followed
No declaration of this scale escapes scrutiny, and the days following the summit produced a spirited, occasionally sceptical, conversation among policy circles, economists and diplomats. Commentators were quick to note what the Declaration deliberately avoided: it named no country on the more combustible geopolitical fault lines, choosing studied ambiguity over confrontation, even as it acknowledged simmering tensions in West Asia. This restraint was itself read as a signal, that a bloc as internally diverse as Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the UAE can only move forward on the strength of what unites it, not what divides it.
Analysts also debated the substance behind the rhetoric of de-dollarisation and financial reform, questioning whether a bloc still negotiating its own internal consensus on trade and currency mechanisms could realistically reshape institutions built over eight decades. Others, more sympathetic to the Global South's grievances, argued that the very act of convening over four hundred meetings across thirty Indian cities, bringing together ministers, parliamentarians, technocrats, businesses and citizens, was itself a form of institution-building, patient and unglamorous, but far more durable than a single communiqué. The debate, in essence, was not about whether BRICS had said the right things, but whether saying them, repeatedly and jointly, could eventually translate into structural change.
III. India's Outlook
For India, the Summit was less an isolated diplomatic event than the culmination of a year-long chairship built around a deliberate proposition: that representation without capacity is hollow, and that political voice must be matched by economic and institutional readiness. This is the thread that ran through India's engagement, from its insistence on resilient and diversified supply chains, to its championing of the Global South's right to a genuine seat at the table, not merely a symbolic one.
India used the platform to advance an agenda that was pragmatic rather than purely aspirational, referencing its own hosting of the AI Impact Summit earlier in the year, pushing for common standards on cybersecurity and data governance, and positioning itself as a credible bridge between the ambitions of emerging economies and the operational discipline needed to realise them. The message India sent, deliberately or otherwise, was one of quiet confidence: that a nation navigating its own extraordinary digital transformation, from public digital infrastructure to an expanding AI ecosystem has both the standing and the responsibility to help shape the norms that will govern technology, trade and trust for the rest of the developing world.
IV. The Message and the Road Ahead
The abiding message of the New Delhi Declaration, stripped of its diplomatic phrasing, is this: the architecture of global governance was built for a world that no longer exists, and the countries most affected by that mismatch intend to keep saying so, together, and increasingly, on their own terms. Whether that translates into reformed institutions or remains an evolving conversation will depend on follow-through, not further declarations.
Speaking to the significance of this moment, Major Vineet Kumar, Founder and Global President of CyberPeace, observed that "India today sits at the forefront of a generational shift, not just in economic growth, but in shaping the digital trust and cyber-resilience frameworks that the rest of the Global South will look to for years to come." It is a fitting note to close on, because the road ahead for BRICS, and for India within it, will likely be won or lost not in the language of declarations, but in the quieter work of building institutions, standards and trust that outlast any single summit.
If the last two decades of BRICS were about proving that such a coalition could exist at all, the next chapter, anchored, for now, by India's own trajectory, will be about proving that it can build something durable: resilient supply chains, credible AI governance, safer digital ecosystems, and institutions genuinely reflective of a multipolar world. The principles have been laid down. What follows will define whether they were a moment, or a movement.
References
- Prime Minister of India, Government of India. BRICS New Delhi Declaration: Building for Resilience, Innovation, Cooperation and Sustainability (September 12, 2026). pmindia.gov.in
- Forbes India. BRICS Summit 2026: 11 Key Takeaways From the New Delhi Declaration. forbesindia.com
- The Statesman. BRICS Summit 2026: Here is what the New Delhi Declaration says. thestatesman.com
- Tribune India. India to host BRICS Summit in 2026; forum collectively condemns Pahalgam terror attack, calls for zero tolerance: Om Birla.tribuneindia.com
- ummid.com News Network. BRICS Declaration 2026: Full Text.* ummid.com
- PIB India (Press Information Bureau, via Substack). BRICS 2026: From Representation to Partnership. pibindia.substack.com
- BRICS Expert Council (Russia). Kumar, Vineet. CyberPeace, BRICS, and a New Framework for Digital Trust. bricscouncil.ru
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Introduction
In the intricate maze of our interconnected world, an unseen adversary conducts its operations with a stealth almost poetic in its sinister intent. This adversary — malware — has extended its tendrils into the digital sanctuaries of Mac users, long perceived as immune to such invasive threats. Our narrative today does not deal with the physical and tangible frontlines we are accustomed to; this is a modern tale of espionage, nestled in the zeros and ones of cyberspace.
The Mac platform, cradled within the fortifications of Apple's walled garden ecosystem, has stood as a beacon of resilience amidst the relentless onslaught of cyber threats. However, this sense of imperviousness has been shaken at its core, heralding a paradigm shift. A new threat lies in wait, bridging the gap between perceived security and uncomfortable vulnerability.
The seemingly invincible Mac OS X, long heralded for its robust security features and impervious resilience to virus attacks, faces an undercurrent of siege tactics from hackers driven by a relentless pursuit for control. This narrative is not about the front-and-centre warfare we see so often reported in media headlines. Instead, it veils itself within the actions of users as benign as the download of pirated software from the murky depths of warez websites.
The Incident
The casual act, born out of innocence or economic necessity, to sidestep the financial requisites of licensed software, has become the unwitting point of compromised security. Users find themselves on the battlefield, one that overshadows the significance of its physical counterpart with its capacity for surreptitious harm. The Mac's seeming invulnerability is its Achilles' heel, as the wariness against potential threats has been eroded by the myth of its impregnability.
The architecture of this silent assault is not one of brute force but of guile. Cyber marauders finesse their way through the defenses with a diversified arsenal; pirated content is but a smokescreen behind which trojans lie in ambush. The very appeal of free access to premium applications is turned against the user, opening a rift that permits these malevolent forces to ingress.
The trojans that permeate the defenses of the Mac ecosystem are architects of chaos. They surreptitiously enrol devices into armies of sorts – botnets which, unbeknownst to their hosts, become conduits for wider assaults on privacy and security. These machines, now soldiers in an unconsented war, are puppeteered to distribute further malware, carry out phishing tactics, and breach the sanctity of secure data.
The Trojan of Mac
A recent exposé by the renowned cybersecurity firm Kaspersky has shone a spotlight on this burgeoning threat. The meticulous investigation conducted in April of this year unveiled a nefarious campaign, engineered to exploit the complacency among Mac users. This operation facilitates the sale of proxy access, linking previously unassailable devices to the infrastructure of cybercriminal networks.
This revelation cannot be overstated in its importance. It illustrates with disturbing clarity the evolution and sophistication of modern malware campaigns. The threat landscape is not stagnant but ever-shifting, adapting with both cunning and opportunity.
Kaspersky's diligence in dissecting this threat detected nearly three dozen popular applications, and tools relied upon by individuals and businesses alike for a multitude of tasks. These apps, now weaponised, span a gamut of functionalities - image editing and enhancement, video compression, data recovery, and network scanning among them. Each one, once a benign asset to productivity, is twisted into a lurking danger, imbued with the power to betray its user.
The duplicity of the trojan is shrouded in mimicry; it disguises its malicious intent under the guise of 'WindowServer,' a legitimate system process intrinsic to the macOS. Its camouflage is reinforced by an innocuously named file, 'GoogleHelperUpdater.plist' — a moniker engineered to evade suspicion and blend seamlessly with benign processes affiliated with familiar applications.
Mode of Operation
Its mode of operation, insidious in its stealth, utilises the Transmission Control Protocol(TCP) and User Datagram Protocol(UDP) networking protocols. This modus operandi allows it to masquerade as a benign proxy. The full scope of its potential commands, however, eludes our grasp, a testament to the shadowy domain from which these threats emerge.
The reach of this trojan does not cease at the periphery of Mac's operating system; it harbours ambitions that transcend platforms. Windows and Android ecosystems, too, find themselves under the scrutiny of this burgeoning threat.
This chapter in the ongoing saga of cybersecurity is more than a cautionary tale; it is a clarion call for vigilance. The war being waged within the circuits and code of our devices underscores an inescapable truth: complacency is the ally of the cybercriminal.
Safety measures and best practices
It is imperative to safeguard the Mac system from harmful intruders, which are constantly evolving. Few measures can play a crucial role in protecting your data in your Mac systems.
- Refrain from Unlicensed Software - Refrain from accessing and downloading pirated software. Plenty of software serves as a decoy for malware which remains dormant till downloaded files are executed.
- Use Trusted Source: Downloading files from legitimate and trusted sources can significantly reduce the threat of any unsolicited files or malware making its way into your Mac system.
- Regular system updates: Regular updates to systems released by the company ensure the latest patches are installed in the system critical to combat and neutralize emerging threats.
- General Awareness: keeping abreast of the latest developments in cyberspace plays a crucial role in avoiding new and emerging threats. It is crucial to keep pace with trends and be well-informed about new threats and ways to combat them.
Conclusion
In conclusion, this silent conflict, though waged in whispers, echoes with repercussions that reverberate through every stratum of digital life. The cyber threats that dance in the shadows cast by our screens are not figments of paranoia, but very real specters hunting for vulnerabilities to exploit. Mac users, once confident in their platforms' defenses, must awaken to the new dawn of cybersecurity awareness.
The battlefield, while devoid of the visceral carnage of physical warfare, is replete with casualties of privacy and breaches of trust. The soldiers in this conflict are disguised as serviceable code, enacting their insidious agendas beneath a façade of normalcy. The victims eschew physical wounds for scars on their digital identities, enduring theft of information, and erosion of security.
As we course through the daunting terrain of digital life, it becomes imperative to heed the lessons of this unseen warfare. Shadows may lie unseen, but it is within their obscurity that the gravest dangers often lurk, a reminder to remain ever vigilant in the face of the invisible adversary.
References:
Executive Summary:
CVE 2024-3094 is a backdoor vulnerability recently found in Kali Linux installations that happened between March 26th to 29th. This vulnerability was found in XZ package version 5.6.0 to 5.6.1. It could allow the malicious actor to compromise SSHD authentication, and grant unauthorized access to the entire system remotely. The users who have installed or updated Kali Linux during the said time are advised to update their system to safeguard against this vulnerability.
The Dangerous Backdoor
The use of the malicious implant found in XZ Utils as a remote code execution tool makes it more dangerous, because of its ability to compromise the affected systems. Initially, researchers believed the vulnerability enabled an authentication bypass for the OpenSSH server (SSHD) process. However, further analysis revealed it is better characterized as a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability.
The backdoor intercepts the RSA_public_decrypt function, verifies the host's signature using a fixed Ed448 key, and if successful, executes malicious code passed by the attacker via the system() function. This leaves no trace in SSHD logs and makes it difficult to detect the vulnerability.
Impacted Linux Distributions
The compromised versions of XZ Utils have been found in the following Linux distributions released in March 2024:
- Kali Linux (between March 26 and March 29)
- openSUSE Tumbleweed and openSUSE MicroOS (March 7 to March 28)
- Fedora 41, Fedora Rawhide, and Fedora Linux 40 beta
- Debian (testing, unstable, and experimental distributions only)
- Arch Linux container images (February 29 to March 29)
- Meanwhile, distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), SUSE Linux Enterprise, openSUSE Leap, and Debian Stable are not believed to be affected.
How Did This Happen?
The malicious code appears to have been inserted by taking advantage of a typical control transfer vulnerability. The original maintainer of the XZ Libs project on GitHub handed over control of the repository to an account that had been contributing to various data compression-related projects for several years. It was at this point that the backdoor was implanted in the project code.
Fortunately, the Potential Disaster Was Averted
As per Igor Kuznetsov, head of Kaspersky's Global Research and Analysis Team (GReAT), the vulnerability CVE-2024-3094 is considered as the largest scale attack that has happened in the Linux ecosystem history. Because it targeted the primary remote management tool for Linux servers on the internet which is SSH servers.
As this vulnerability was detected in the testing and rolling distributions in the short period of time, where the latest software packages are used. This results to the minimum damage to the linux users and so far no case of CVE-2024-3094 being actively exploited have been detected.
Staying Safe
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) advises that users who installed or updated the affected operating systems in March immediately roll back to XZ Utils 5.4.6 version and be on alert for any malicious activity. It is recommended to change the passwords in the case of a distribution where a weak version of XZ Utils has been installed.
The Yara rule has been released to detect any infected systems by CVE-2024-3094 Vulnerability.
Conclusion
The discovery of the XZ Utils backdoor provides a reminder to be vigilant in the open source software environment. This supply chain attack highlights the importance of strong security measures, elaborate code reviews, and regular distribution of security updates to provide shield against such vulnerabilities. Always staying informed and taking the necessary precautions, Linux users can mitigate the potential impact of this vulnerability to keep their systems safe.
References :
- https://thehackernews.com/2024/03/urgent-secret-backdoor-found-in-xz.html
- https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2024/03/29/cve-2024-3094-linux-backdoor/
- https://www.kali.org/blog/about-the-xz-backdoor/
- https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/cve-2024-3094-vulnerability-backdoor/50873/
- https://www.rapid7.com/blog/post/2024/04/01/etr-backdoored-xz-utils-cve-2024-3094/
