#FactCheck - Fake Image Claiming Patanjali selling Beef Biryani Recipe mix is Misleading
Executive Summary:
A photo that has gone viral on social media alleges that the Indian company Patanjali founded by Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev is selling a product called “Recipe Mix for Beef Biryani”. The image incorporates Ramdev’s name in its promotional package. However, upon looking into the matter, CyberPeace Research Team revealed that the viral image is not genuine. The original image was altered and it has been wrongly claimed which does not even exist. Patanjali is an Indian brand designed for vegetarians and an intervention of Ayurveda. For that reason, the image in context is fake and misleading.
Claims:
An image circulating on social media shows Patanjali selling "Recipe Mix for Beef Biryani”.
Fact Check:
Upon receiving the viral image, the CyberPeace Research Team immediately conducted an in-depth investigation. A reverse image search revealed that the viral image was taken from an unrelated context and digitally altered to be associated with the fabricated packaging of "National Recipe Mix for Biryani".
The analysis of the image confirmed signs of manipulation. Patanjali, a well-established Indian brand known for its vegetarian products, has no record of producing or promoting a product called “Recipe mix for Beef Biryani”. We also found a similar image with the product specified as “National Biryani” in another online store.
Comparing both photos, we found that there are several differences.
Further examination of Patanjali's product catalog and public information verified that this viral image is part of a deliberate attempt to spread misinformation, likely to damage the reputation of the brand and its founder. The entire claim is based on a falsified image aimed at provoking controversy, and therefore, is categorically false.
Conclusions:
The viral image associating Patanjali and Baba Ramdev with "Recipe mix for Beef Biryani" is entirely fake. This image was deliberately manipulated to spread false information and damage the brand’s reputation. Social media users are encouraged to fact-check before sharing any such claims, as the spread of misinformation can have significant consequences. The CyberPeace Research Team emphasizes the importance of verifying information before circulating it to avoid spreading false narratives.
- Claim: Patanjali and Baba Ramdev endorse "Recipe mix for Beef Biryani"
- Claimed on: X
- Fact Check: Fake & Misleading
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Transforming Misguided Knowledge into Social Strength
यत्र योगेश्वरः कृष्णो यत्र पार्थो धनुर्धरः । तत्र श्रीर्विजयो भूतिर्ध्रुवा नीतिर्मतिर्मम ॥ (Bhagavad Gita) translates as “Where there is divine guidance and righteous effort, there will always be prosperity, victory, and morality.” In the context of the idea of rehabilitation, this verse teaches us that if offenders receive proper guidance, their skills can be redirected. Instead of causing harm, the same abilities can be transformed into tools for protection and social good. Cyber offenders who misuse their skills can, through structured guidance, be redirected toward constructive purposes like cyber defence, digital literacy, and security innovation. This interpretation emphasises not discarding the “spoiled” but reforming and reintegrating them into society.
Introduction
Words and places are often associated with positive and negative aspects based on their history, stories, and the activities that might happen in that certain place. For example, the word “hacker” has a negative connotation, as does the place “Jamtara”, which is identified with its shady history as a cybercrime hotspot, but often people forget that there are lots of individuals who use their hacking skills to serve and protect their nation, also known as “white hat hackers”, a.k.a. ethical hackers, and places like Jamtara have a substantial number of talented individuals who have lost their way and are often victims of their circumstances. This presents the authorities with a fundamental issue of destigmatising cybercriminals and the need to act on their rehabilitation. The idea is to shift from punitive responses to rehabilitative and preventive approaches, especially in regions like Jamtara.
The Deeper Problem: Systemic Gaps and Social Context
Jamtara is not an isolated or a single case; there are many regions like Mewat, Bharatpur, Deoghar, Mathura, etc., that are facing a crisis, and various lives are uprooted because youth are entrapped in cybercrime rings, often to escape unemployment, poverty, and simply in the hope of a better life. In one such heart-wrenching story, a 24-year-old Shakil, belonging to Nuh, Haryana, was arrested for committing various cybercrimes, including sextortion and financial scams, and while his culpability is not in question here, his background reflects a deeper issue. He committed these crimes to pay for his diabetic father’s mounting bills and to see his sister, Shabana, married. This is the story of almost every other individual in the rural areas who is forced into committing these crimes, if not by a person, but by their circumstances. In a news report covered in 2024, an intervention was launched by various Meo leaders and social organisations in the Mewat region aimed at weaning the youth away from cybercrimes.
Not only poverty, but lack of education, social awareness, and digital literacy have acted as active agents for pushing the youth of India away from mainstream growth and towards the dark trenches of the cybercrime world. The local authorities have made active efforts to solve this problem; for instance, to dispel Jamtara’s unfavourable reputation for cybercrime and set the city firmly on the path to change, community libraries have been established in all 118 panchayats spread across six blocks of the district by IAS officer and DM Faiz Aq Ahmed Mumtaz.
The menace of cybercrimes is not limited to rural areas, as various reports surfaced during and post-COVID, where young children from urban areas became victims of various cybercrimes such as cyberbullying and stalking, and often perpetrators were someone from the same age group, adding to the dilemma. The issue has been noticed by various agencies, and the a need to deal with both victims and the accused in a sensitised manner. Recently, ex-CJI DY Chandrachud called for international collaboration to combat juvenile cybercrimes, as there are many who are ensnared and coerced into these criminal gangs, and swift resolution is the key to ensuring justice and rehabilitation.
CyberPeace Policy Outlook
Cybercrime is often a product of skill without purpose. The youth who are often pushed into these crimes either have an incomplete idea of the veracity of their actions or have no other resort. The legal system and the agencies will have to look beyond the nature of the crimes and adopt and undertake a reformative approach so that these people can make their way into society and harness their skills ethically. A good alternative would be to organise Cyber Bootcamps for Reform, i.e., structured training with placement support, and explain to them how ethical hacking and cybersecurity careers can be attractive alternatives. One way to make the process effective is to share real-world stories of reformed hackers. There are many who belong to small villages and districts who have written success stories on reform after participating in digital training programmes. The crime they commit doesn’t have to be the last thing they are able to do in life; it doesn’t have to be the ending. The digital programmes should be organised in a way and in a vernacular that the youth are well-versed in, so there are no language barriers. The programme may give training for coding, cyber hygiene, legal literacy, ethical hacking, psychological counselling, and financial literacy workshops.
It has become a matter of reclaiming the misdirected talent, as rehabilitation is not just humane; it is strategic in the fight against cybercrime. On 1st April 2025, IIT Madras Pravartak Technologies Foundation finished training its first batch of law enforcement officers in cybersecurity techniques. The initiative is commendable, and a similar initiative may prove effective for the youth accused of cybercrimes, and preferably, they can be involved in similar rehabilitation and empowerment programmes during the early stages of criminal proceedings. This will help prevent recidivism and convert digital deviance into digital responsibility. In order to successfully incorporate this into law enforcement, the police can effectively use it to identify first-time, non-habitual offenders involved in low-impact cybercrimes. Also, courts can exercise the authority to require participation in an approved cyber-reform programme as a condition of bail in addition to bail hearings.
Along with this, under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, children in conflict with the law can be sent to observation homes where modules for digital literacy and skill development can be implemented. Other methods that may prove effective may include Restorative Justice Programmes, Court-monitored rehabilitation, etc.
Conlusion
A rehabilitative approach does not simply punish offenders, it transforms their knowledge into a force for good, ensuring that cybercrime is not just curtailed but converted into cyber defence and progress.
References
- Ismat Ara, How an impoverished district in Haryana became a breeding ground for cybercriminals, FRONTLINE (Jul 27, 2023, 11:00 IST), https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/spotlight-how-nuh-district-in-haryana-became-a-breeding-ground-for-cybercriminals/article67098193.ece )
- Mohammed Iqbal, Counselling, skilling aim to wean Mewat youth away from cybercrimes, THE HINDU (Jul. 28, 2024, 01:39 AM), https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/counselling-skilling-aim-to-wean-mewat-youth-away-from-cybercrimes/article68454985.ece
- Prawin Kumar Tiwary,Jamtara’s journey from cybercrime to community libraries, 101 REPORTERS (Feb. 16, 2022), https://101reporters.com/article/development/Jamtaras_journey_from_cybercrime_to_community_libraries .
- IIT Madras Pravartak completes Training First Batch of Cyber Commandos, PRESS INFORMATION BUREAU (Apr. 1, 2025, 03:36 PM), https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2117256
On 12 August 2026, President Donald Trump signed a National Security Presidential Memorandum titled Expanding Capabilities to Combat Transnational Cyber Enabled Crime. Stripped of its bureaucratic packaging, the document does something American law has resisted for three decades: it lets private companies, under close federal supervision, break into the systems of foreign criminal networks and, in some cases, disrupt or damage them.
That is a genuinely large policy shift, even if the memorandum itself is careful, almost defensive, about how it frames the shift. Understanding why requires separating what the text actually authorizes from the "hack back" headline that has attached itself to the story within days of signing.
The problem the memo says it is solving
The White House frames this as a response to scale, not ideology. Americans reported losing more than 20.8 billion dollars to cyber enabled crime in 2025, a sharp jump from the roughly 12.5 billion dollar figure cited when the administration's earlier March 2026 executive order on cybercrime, fraud, and predatory schemes was signed. Ransomware, phishing, financial fraud, sextortion, and impersonation scams sit at the center of that number, and the administration's own supporting material points to a grim detail buried in the numbers: one in seven young people who experienced sextortion as a minor reported harming themselves as a result.
Those crimes, the memorandum argues, are increasingly the work of organized, transnational groups operating from jurisdictions the FBI simply cannot reach. Domestic law enforcement, built for domestic crime, is structurally mismatched to a threat that lives across borders and inside encrypted infrastructure. The administration's answer is to formally recruit the resource it says is best positioned to close that gap: the American cybersecurity industry itself, which the memo describes as "the most innovative and technologically advanced in the world."
What the Program actually authorizes
The memorandum directs the National Coordination Center, a body first stood up under a 2025 executive order, to build a formal Program through which vetted Participating Companies can conduct two categories of activity against foreign Cyber Enabled Transnational Criminal Organizations, defined in the text as CE TCOs.
Cyber Surveillance Operations cover unauthorized access to a target's systems for the primary purpose of collecting information or intelligence, undertaken with the intent to remain undetected. Cyber Effects Operations go further: manipulating, disrupting, denying, degrading, or destroying information systems, the infrastructure those systems control, or the data resident on them.
Crucially, CE TCOs are defined narrowly. A foreign group only counts if it targets the US government, US persons, or US interests, and it must not be an institutional arm of a foreign state or wholly directed by one. The memo builds in a presumption of innocence at the state level too: a group is assumed not to be state controlled unless clear intelligence establishes otherwise. That distinction matters enormously, because it is the line meant to separate this Program from anything resembling private warfare against a nation state.
No operation happens unilaterally. Every proposed action must be approved in writing by two Program Executive Directors, one designated by the Attorney General and one by the Secretary of Homeland Security, coordinating with each other before signing off. Participating Companies must pass what the memo calls rigorous vetting, sign contractual agreements with DOJ or DHS, and in many cases post a bond or escrow of at least one million dollars, forfeited if they breach their agreement. Within 60 days of the memo's signing, the Program Executive Directors must publish detailed operating procedures covering everything from target adjudication to what happens if an operation accidentally hits a US person's system, in which case the company must stop, run minimization procedures, and immediately notify the Center.
There is also a hard ceiling built into the design. Operations expected to cause loss of life, serious injury, or conduct that would rise to the level of a use of force or armed attack under international law, termed Critical Outcomes in the text, cannot be approved by the Program Executive Directors at all. That ceiling is the memo's clearest attempt to keep this inside the bounds of law enforcement rather than sliding into something closer to conflict.
Multiple law firms tracking the rollout, including Wiley, have been explicit on one point worth repeating because so much coverage has blurred it: this is not a green light for companies to hack back on their own initiative. Every operation remains, on paper, an act of the federal government, merely executed through a contracted private hand.
Why experts are not popping champagne
Legal caution has not stopped a wave of professional anxiety. Cyber policy veterans interviewed by outlets like CyberScoop describe the memo as a genuine philosophical break in how Washington thinks about offense in cyberspace, and the debate that followed split fairly evenly between cautious optimism and open alarm.
The core worry, echoed across nearly every serious critique, is attribution. Cyber operations are hard to trace precisely because criminals exploit shared infrastructure, proxies, and compromised third party systems to hide, and that same fog does not lift just because a government contract sits behind the operator. A former senior CISA official, Michael Garcia, put the risk plainly: pressure to attribute quickly could push companies toward lower certainty judgments about who they are actually striking, with a realistic chance of hitting the wrong server, or worse, infrastructure tied to a foreign government rather than a criminal gang. A former Cyber Command official was blunter still, describing parts of the memo on social media as a structure that could reward companies for manufacturing billable threats rather than resolving them efficiently.
Paul Rosenzweig, a former DHS policy official, raised a separate and arguably more durable problem: jurisdiction. Whatever this memo authorizes under American law, the systems being accessed usually sit inside someone else's sovereign territory, governed by that country's own criminal statutes. Washington cannot legislate away a foreign hacking law simply by calling the American company that broke it a Participating Company.
None of this makes the memo indefensible. Supporters point out, correctly, that the private sector already does enormous amounts of active defense and threat disruption work informally, through botnet takedown litigation and coordinated infrastructure seizures, and that formalizing federal oversight over that activity is arguably safer than the current improvisation. The honest position, and probably the fair one, is that the memo trades one set of risks for another, and which set turns out worse will depend entirely on the operating procedures due inside sixty days, procedures the public has not yet seen.
CyberPeace Insights: what this means beyond America's borders
A significant share of the CE-TCO activity this memo is built to target, the ransomware crews, romance investment fraud operations, and sextortion rings running out of Southeast Asia, does not victimize Americans in isolation. The scam compounds clustered along the Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos borders, repeatedly raided over the past two years, have held thousands of trafficked workers of dozens of nationalities, Indians consistently among the largest groups rescued, alongside Chinese, Filipino, and Malaysian nationals. India has run its own repatriation efforts out of Mae Sot in Thailand, bringing citizens home several hundred at a time, and has built its own institutional response to this threat through the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre, which coordinates cybercrime enforcement across states and increasingly across borders.
That shared exposure gives India and the United States real common ground here. The criminal infrastructure this American Program is designed to disrupt is, in significant part, the same infrastructure that has trafficked and defrauded Indian citizens, which gives New Delhi genuine reason to watch this experiment closely and constructively. At the same time, the Program's underlying model, private companies conducting cross-border operations under one nation's legal authorization, is a genuinely new template in international cyber governance, and how it performs over its first year will likely shape how other major digital economies, India included, think about calibrating their own frameworks for public-private cooperation against transnational cybercrime. India and other nations should closely watch whether this becomes a template worth adapting or a cautionary tale worth avoiding.
It is pertinent to note that Justice and Homeland Security departments have 60 days to write detailed operating procedures covering everything from a target-vetting rubric to a classified operational workflow and 180 days to deliver the first status report to the White House.
References
- The White House. "Expanding Capabilities to Combat Transnational Cyber Enabled Crime." 12 August 2026. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/08/expanding-capabilities-to-combat-transnational-cyber-enabled-crime/
- Wiley Rein LLP. "Navigating the New Presidential Memorandum on Transnational Cyber Enabled Crime." August 2026. https://www.wiley.law/alert-Navigating-the-New-Presidential-Memorandum-on-Transnational-Cyber-Enabled-Crime
- SecureWorld. "Trump Memo Lets Private Firms Hack Back at Cybercriminals." August 2026. https://www.secureworld.io/industry-news/trump-authorizes-private-firms-offensive-cyber-operations
- CyberScoop. "A bold new strategy or a dangerous precedent? Experts are divided on Trump's memo." August 2026. https://cyberscoop.com/private-sector-hacking-presidential-memo-cybersecurity/
- CyberScoop. "Trump turns to private sector in offensive hacking operations memo." August 2026. https://cyberscoop.com/trump-memo-private-sector-offensive-hacking/
- CNN Politics. "Cyber privateers: Trump issues order allowing US companies to hack overseas groups under certain conditions." August 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/13/politics/cyber-privateers-trump-order-overseas-groups-hacking
- NPR. "Trump administration wants to allow companies to hack foreign cybercriminals." August 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/08/15/nx-s1-5930311/trump-companies-hack-foreign-cybercriminals
- The Next Web. "President Donald Trump signs memo letting US agencies hack transnational crime groups abroad." August 2026. https://thenextweb.com/news/trump-cyber-memo-transnational-crime
- Machine News. "Security firms hit back at Trump's call to hack back against international crime gangs." August 2026. https://www.machine.news/security-firms-hit-back-at-trumps-call-to-hack-back-against-international-crime-gangs/
- Lawfare. "Trump Admin Cyber Strategy Centers Private Sector in Offensive Cyber Operations." March 2026. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/trump-admin-cyber-strategy-centers-private-sector-in-offensive-cyber-operations
- Lawfare. "Partners or Provocateurs? Private Sector Involvement in Offensive Cyber Operations." July 2025. https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/partners-or-provocateurs--private-sector-involvement-in-offensive-cyber-operations
- Global Indian Network. "Pig Butchering Scams in India: The Dark Intersection of Social Media, AI, and Emotional Manipulation." January 2026. https://globalindiannetwork.com/pig-butchering-scams-in-india/
- The Tribune. "India brings home scammed 549 nationals from Myanmar in 2 days." 2025. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/india/india-brings-home-scammed-549-nationals-from-myanmar-in-2-days
- Malay Mail. "India to repatriate 500 nationals fleeing Myanmar's cyber scam hub, says Thai PM." October 2025. https://www.malaymail.com/amp/news/world/2025/10/29/india-to-repatriate-500-nationals-fleeing-myanmars-cyber-scam-hub-says-thai-pm/196399
- NBC News. "260 foreigners rescued from virtual slavery in Myanmar's online scam centers are being repatriated." 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/260-foreigners-rescued-virtual-slavery-myanmars-online-scam-centers-ar-rcna192180
- CyberPeace Foundation. "About Us." https://cyberpeace.org/about-us
Contributors
- Maj. Vineet Kumar, Founder & Global President, CyberPeace
- Mr. Neeraj Soni, Senior Research Analyst, Policy & Advocacy, CyberPeace
List of Abbreviations
- CE‑TCO — Cyber Enabled Transnational Criminal Organization
- DOJ — Department of Justice
- DHS — Department of Homeland Security
- FBI — Federal Bureau of Investigation
- CISA — Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
- I4C — Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre
- US — United States
- IT — Information Technology
What are Wi-Fi attacks?
Wi-fi is an important area of cyber security and there is no need for physical cable for the network. Wi-Fi has access to a network signal radius everywhere. The devices and systems can have a network without physical access due to Wi-fi. But everything comes with cons and pros, and if we talk about cybersecurity, it has been established that Wi-fi networks are extremely vulnerable to security breaches and it is very easy to be hacked by hackers. Wi-Fi can be accessed by almost every device in the modern day: it can be smartphones, tablets, computers, and laptops. To know whether someone has been tampering with your personal Wi-Fi there are certain signs that can prove it. The first and most important sign is that your internet speed gets slower, as someone else is using your Wi-Fi surf.
Why would anyone hack someone’s Wi-Fi network?
Usually, hackers hack the network because they want access to the confidential data of someone and they can observe all the online activities and data that have been sent through a network. An unauthorize hacker will pretty much be able to see everything you do online. Wi-Fi allows hackers o view information on sites. Any financial information which is saved in the browser can be accessed by hackers and they can alter it and can alter the content you see online. And all the information saved in Wi-fi networks can be used by hackers for their own benefit, they can sell it, impersonate you, or even take money out of your bank through Wi-Fi.
Avoiding vulnerable Wi-Fi networks
The first and foremost rule of protection is that you should not use public networks if that network is easily open to you then that is also available to others and from others, and someone can who wishes to use your confidential and sensitive information, can access that. If you really need to access the public network in an urgent situation, then you must make sure to limit your activities while connected. And avoid accessing your online banking or pages that require login information. Also, a good measure to take as well is to always delete your cookies after using public WIFI.
How To Secure Your Home Wi-Fi Network
Your home’s wireless internet connection is your Wi-Fi network. Typically, a wireless router is used, which broadcasts a signal into the atmosphere. You can connect to the internet using that signal. However, if your network is not password-protected, any nearby device can grab the signal off the air and connect to your internet. The benefit of Wi-Fi? Wireless access to the internet is possible. The negative? Your internet activity, including your personal information, may be visible to neighboring users who connect to your unprotected network. Furthermore, if someone uses your network to conduct a crime or send out unauthorized spam, you might be held accountable.
Wi-Fi or Li-Fi? –
The common consensus is that Li-Fi technology is more secure than Wi-Fi. Li-Fi systems can be made more secure by integrating a variety of security features. Although these qualities might appear when Li-Fi is widely used in the near future, it is already thought to be safer because of a number of security features. Since the connection’s characteristics make it simpler to lock connections, limit access, and track users even in the absence of encryption and other security features, Li-Fi is seen as being safer. Li-Fi systems will be able to support new security protocols, which will not only enable high-speed networking but also open the door for innovative security techniques to strengthen connections.
Conclusion
A hacker can sniff the network packets without having to be in the same building where the network is located. As wireless networks communicate through radio waves, a hacker can easily sniff the network from a nearby location. Most attackers use network sniffing to find the SSID and hack a wireless network.
Any wireless network can theoretically be attacked in a number of different ways. Use of the default SSID or password, WPS pin authentication, insufficient access control, and leaving the access point available in open locations are all examples of potential vulnerabilities that could allow for the theft of sensitive data. Kismet’s architecture in WIDS mode may guard against DOS, MiTM, and MAC spoofing attacks. routine software updates on the other hand, the use of firewalls may help defend the network against outside intrusion. The act of finding infrastructure issues that could allow harmful code to be injected into a service, system, or organization is known as ethical hacking. They use this technique to prevent invasions by lawfully breaking into networks and looking for weak spots.
