#FactCheck- Viral ‘Prison Torture’ Video Not from Israel, Taken from Iraqi TV Show

Executive Summary
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A 22-second video is circulating on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) with a claim that a shooting incident took place at Patna High School in Bihar. The video shows several masked men running around with weapons in their hands, accompanied by the sound of gunfire. A text overlay on the video reads "Patna High School." However, an research by the CyberPeace Research Wing has revealed that this claim is entirely fake and misleading. The video does not depict a real shooting; it captures an authorized movie/web series shooting on the school premises.

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The Claim
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Social media users are sharing the video claiming that a real firing incident occurred at Patna High School in Patna, Bihar. https://x.com/IraRuhi/status/2070334893830357499

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Fact Check

Keyframes from the viral video were analyzed using reverse image search. This led to identical videos uploaded on Facebook and Instagram on June 25, 2026. The captions on both uploads explicitly stated that the footage was from a movie and web series shoot. Furthermore, a closer inspection of the videos revealed professional filmmaking equipment, such as a black flag and a skimmer, visible on the set. https://www.facebook.com/reel/2160248068089642 

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https://www.instagram.com/p/DaBE0gQglUF/

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A targeted keyword search led to a YouTube video uploaded on June 20, 2026. The visuals in this video perfectly matched the viral footage, and the individuals seen in the viral clip could be spotted wearing the exact same clothes.  "Regarding the video/photo being circulated on social media (Patna High School, Gardanibagh), it is clarified that this is part of an authorized film shooting, for which due permission was previously granted by the competent authority." 

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To verify further, official statements were checked. The Patna Police issued a formal press release on June 26, 2026, completely dismissing the viral rumors.  https://x.com/PatnaPolice24x7/status/2070501501529960581

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Conclusion
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The evidence gathered confirms that there was no shooting incident at Patna High School. The viral video is behind-the-scenes footage from a pre-approved film production.

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Introduction

The advent of frontier AI has significantly widened the range of actors who can launch cyberattacks, extending beyond state actors with immense capabilities or organized professional cybercriminal rings. In its most critical advisory, CIAD-2026-0020, titled "Defending against frontier AI-driven cyber risks," which was released on April 26, 2026, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) officially stated that AI can now carry out autonomous cyber activities of unprecedented scale and speed. The advisory highlights that these frontier AI models can perform automated reconnaissance, phishing, malware creation, vulnerability identification, and social engineering with minimal human involvement, thus "lowering the barrier to orchestrating complex cyber attacks." The risks that such AI models pose are not restricted to state actors and corporate entities anymore and also extend to MSMEs, public organizations, and individuals.

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India’s Escalating Cybercrisis

The Indian digital economy has been developing at a very fast pace, but the same cannot be said about its cybersecurity. Having a base of over 850 million internet users and a digital payment sector that records a massive 22,495 crore in monthly transaction volumes, coupled with the fastest-growing cloud sector in the world, India continues to remain a lucrative prey for cybercriminals. There were over 265 million attempts reported in the last year, 2025, alone, where close to 46% of all incidents detected were in enterprises with fewer than 1,000 employees, a very grave reality for MSMEs. MHA confirmed there were 28.15 lakh reported cybercrime complaints in 2025 as compared to 2024, with a jump of 24%. In this worsening environment the advisory is a breakthrough in Indian cyber governance. Where previously advisories covered only conventional threats like phishing and malware, the new warning names frontier agentic AI systems as autonomous multipliers of threats, capable of conducting operations at scale and speed with significantly reduced human oversight.

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What is “Frontier AI” and why does it matter?

CERT-In’s decision to adopt the term "Frontier AI" is deliberate and meaningful. The advisory’s scope is a new category of agentic AI, which moves well beyond traditional chatbot-style AI, having the capacity to reason, plan, perform multiple actions in a single task autonomously, and carry out complicated tasks with minimal or no human guidance. CERT-In highlights that these tools now possess the capabilities that were "previously carried out by a coordinated team of skilled cybersecurity professionals." The advisory clearly flags the risk that these advanced models have the capability to generate malicious code, conduct network scans, probe systems for vulnerabilities, and even orchestrate intricate multi-stage cyberattacks in a single session. Their capacity to analyse a vast number of source code libraries to identify vulnerabilities, even unknown zero-day ones, and then develop proof-of-concept exploits at high speed. This means that the historical lead time to turn a vulnerability discovery into an exploit tool has reduced from weeks to just hours.

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Six Core Threat Vectors identified by CERT-In

1. AI-driven Automatic Zero-Day Discovery: AI-based solutions discover zero-day vulnerabilities and automatically create exploits in minutes, reducing the time taken by defenders.
2. AI-driven Autonomous Reconnaissance: AI-driven agents scan cloud infra, APIs, and enterprise networks and outline attack vectors.
3. AI-driven phishing & deepfakes: Multilingual, highly targeted phishing emails, deepfake audio, and deepfake voice/video calls bring sophistication to social engineering.
4. Deepfake Financial Fraud: AI creates deepfake executives for high-value money transfers. For example, reports have indicated crore-level fund loss cases in India.
5. AI-powered Autonomous Attack Chains: Advanced AI models are able to automatically perform multiple malicious stages like privilege escalation, lateral movement, data exfiltration, and data extraction.
6. Cascading failures of interconnected systems: A single AI-supported security breach can have catastrophic domino effects on connected digital systems and critical infrastructures.

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Why are MSMEs a target?

CERT-In’s warning is specifically targeted toward the weakness of the Indian MSMEs. Contributing almost 30% to India's GDP and employing over 110 million individuals, most MSMEs have failed to adequately prepare themselves against contemporary cyber threats. While a large corporation would have a full-time cybersecurity team, a security operation centre, and frequent vulnerability assessments, the majority of MSMEs lack such infrastructure due to budget constraints, out-of-date software, etc. This lack of security has proved to be quite disadvantageous for smaller businesses, as India was identified as one of the top global targets for cyberattacks, where approximately 46% of the total breaches worldwide targeted organizations having fewer than 1000 employees. The advisory claims that frontier AI systems have significantly increased the threats, for the skills necessary to carry out advanced cyberattacks have dramatically decreased. Ransomware, phishing and data exfiltration can be executed by even unsophisticated attackers. The aftermath could result in critical financial, operational, and compliance impact on these MSMEs.

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The Global Context

These developments seem to validate CERT-In's warning about threats posed by frontier AI. In its 2026 State of Cybersecurity Report, ISACA listed AI-related threats as the top concern of cybersecurity professionals; 61% of those surveyed reported generative AI/large language models as the top technology trend impacting cyber risk. Worryingly, in 2026 only 7% were confident in their organizations' defenses against ransomware. Check Point Software's Cyber Security Report 2026 corroborates this; in 2025 the report stated that in a single year, the trend of combined social engineering-based campaigns with automated operational execution has risen considerably. In all phases of the lifecycle of a cyberattack reconnaissance, social engineering, and tactical decision-making AI is being applied. KPMG is warning of deepfake-enabled fraud now "spreading at a faster rate than that experienced at the beginning of the phishing era, which is currently still the leading type of attack in the world."

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CERT-In Recommendations

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For Large Organisations:

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1. The use of security monitoring, threat detection, and log analysis should be increased.
2. DDoS protection systems and multi-factor authentication (MFA) should be implemented on all internet-facing devices and assets.
3. Critical security patches should be installed within 24 hours of release.
4. Old VPN and remote-access infrastructure should be updated or replaced.
5. AI-driven cyber drills and incident response simulations should be regularly performed.

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1. Software and security updates should be automatically enabled on all devices and systems.
2. MFA should be enabled on organisational accounts and sensitive platforms.
3. MSMEs should utilize MSSPs for specialized support and monitoring.
4. Detailed inventories of IT assets and system logs should be kept for fast incident response.
5. Staff should be educated about identifying AI-generated phishing, deepfakes, and scams.

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For Individuals:

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• Independent communication channels should be used to verify any dubious message or money request.
• Software from unverified sources or unauthorised channels should not be downloaded.
• The use of strong and unique passwords along with MFA wherever possible should be enforced.

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From Advisory to Action

The May 2026 cybersecurity road map released by CERT-In signals a departure from identification of threats to enabling operations against frontier AI-led cyber threat landscapes. This initiative builds on their April advice and delineates a clearly articulated three-phase roadmap comprising immediate cyber readiness, AI governance controls, and deep integration of AI-driven defenses. It also provides for the establishment of a focused AI Cyber Defense Center and various multisector governance provisions. A prominent area is the increased threat of impersonation via deepfakes, and companies are encouraged to institute executive verification procedures prior to approving high-value transactions. The framework also emphasizes the establishment of an AI asset register requiring formal accounting and governance of all AI systems utilized in an enterprise. Meanwhile, CERT-In also recognizes the twin-use nature of frontier AI: for every threat, the same technology can bolster security with automated threat detection, phishing, and log analysis in real time.  However, the deployment of state-of-the-art defenses is uneven, especially with MSMEs, where there isn’t the requisite domain expertise and funding for this infrastructure. Accordingly, the road map puts the emphasis on immediate and stronger cyber hygiene, compulsory incident reporting, enhancing AI literacy, and proper implementation of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act for long-term security investment and resilience.

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Conclusion

The CERT-In advisory CIAD-2026-0020 signifies a vital acknowledgment of AI's transformational impact on the cybersecurity ecosystem. Capabilities formerly exclusive to elite state actors are being deployed by low-skilled users, leveraging state-of-the-art frontier AI tools. India’s MSMEs, enterprises, and digital citizens are experiencing a rapidly accelerating threat milieu. In this context, the CERT-In advisory and the ensuing blueprint can no longer be dismissed as ordinary government pronouncements but as critical operational imperatives. It is the country’s ability over the next few years to shore up its collective cyber resilience to the ever-increasing scale and sophistication of AI-powered attacks that will prove crucial.

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References:

1. https://www.cert-in.org.in/s2cMainServlet?pageid=PUBVLNOTES02&VLCODE=CIAD-2026-0020
2. https://www.zeebiz.com/technology/news-cert-in-flags-high-severity-ai-cyber-risks-amid-claude-mythos-concerns-394448
3. https://www.business-standard.com/technology/tech-news/cert-in-warning-ai-scams-frontier-models-mythos-gpt-5-5-what-it-means-126042800988_1.html
4. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251020612551/en/
5. https://corporate.indiamart.com/2025/07/29/staying-ahead-of-cyber-threats/
6. https://kpmg.com/kpmg-us/content/dam/kpmg/pdf/2025/deepfakes-real-threat.pdf

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Introduction

The ongoing debate on whether AI scaling has hit a wall has been rehashed by the underwhelming response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT v5. AI scaling laws, which describe that machine learning models perform better with increased training data, model parameters and computational resources, have guided the rapid progress of Large Language Models (LLMs) so far. But many AI researchers suggest that further improvements in LLMs will have to be effected through large computational costs by orders of magnitude, which does not justify the returns.  The question, then, is whether scaling remains a viable path or whether the field must explore new approaches. This is not just a tech issue but a profound innovation challenge for countries like India, charting their own AI course. 

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The Scaling Wall: Gaps and Innovation Opportunities

Escalating costs, data scarcity, and diminishing gains mean that simply building larger AI models may no longer guarantee breakthroughs. In such a scenario, LLM developers will have to refine new approaches to training these models, for example, by diversifying data types and redefining training techniques.  

This global challenge has a bearing on India’s AI ambitions. For India, where compute and data resources are relatively scarce, this scaling slowdown poses both a challenge and an opportunity. While the India AI Mission embodies smart priorities such as democratising compute resources and developing local datasets, looming scaling challenges could prove a roadblock.  Realising these ambitions requires strong input from research and academia, and improved coordination between policymakers and startups. The scaling wall highlights systemic innovation gaps where sustained support is needed, not only in hardware but also in talent development, safety research, and efficient model design.

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Way Forward

To truly harness AI’s transformative power, India must prioritise policy actions and ecosystem shifts that support smarter, safer, and context-rich research through the following measures: 

• Driving Efficiency and Compute Innovation: Instead of relying on brute-force scaling, India should invest in research and startups working on efficient architectures, energy-conscious training methods, and compute optimisation.
• Investing in Multimodal and Diverse Data: While indigenous datasets are being developed under the India AI Mission through AI Kosha, they must be ethically sourced from speech, images, video, sensor data, and regional content, apart from text, to enable context-rich AI models truly tailored to Indian needs. 
• Addressing Core Problems for Trustworthy AI:  LLMs offered by all major companies, like OpenAI, Grok, and Deepseek, have the problem of unreliability, hallucinations, and biases, since they are primarily built on scaling large datasets and parameters, which have inherent limitations. India should invest in capabilities to solve these issues and design more trustworthy LLMs.
• Supporting Talent Development and Training: Despite its substantial AI talent pool, India faces an impending demand-supply gap. It will need to launch national programs and incentives to upskill engineers, researchers, and students in advanced AI skills such as model efficiency, safety, interpretability, and new training paradigms

Conclusion

The AI scaling wall debate is a reminder that the future of LLMs will depend not on ever-larger models but on smarter, safer, and more sustainable innovation. A new generation of AI is approaching us, and India can help shape its future. The country’s AI Mission and startup ecosystem are well-positioned to lead this shift by focusing on localised needs, efficient technologies, and inclusive growth, if implemented effectively. How India approaches this new set of challenges and translates its ambitions into action, however, remains to be seen.

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References

• https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-scaling-laws/
• https://www.marketingaiinstitute.com/blog/scaling-laws-ai-wall 
• https://fortune.com/2025/02/19/generative-ai-scaling-agi-deep-learning/ 
• https://indiaai.gov.in/ 
• https://www.deloitte.com/in/en/about/press-room/bridging-the-ai-talent-gap-to-boost-indias-tech-and-economic-impact-deloitte-nasscom-report.html 

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