An advisory against the Android phone-infecting malware called “Daam” has been issued by the Central Government. 

The virus can hack into your call records, contacts, history, and camera, the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team, or CERT-In, the national cyber security agency, said in its warning.

The “Daam” virus can “bypass anti-virus programs and deploy ransomware on the targeted devices,” according to the advisory. 

According to the agency, third-party websites or applications downloaded from unreliable or unknown sources distribute the Android botnet.

The agency is the federal technology arm that battles digital assaults and guards cyberspace against phishing, hacking, and similar online attacks.

The Android botnet gets circulated through outside sites or applications downloaded from untrusted/obscure sources, the office said.

According to the advisory, “Once it is placed in the device, the malware tries to bypass the security check of the device and after a successful attempt, it attempts to steal sensitive data, and permissions such as reading history and bookmarks, killing background processing, and reading call logs etc.”

“Daam” can also hack phone call recordings, contacts, the camera, change device passwords, take screenshots, steal SMSs, download and upload files, and other things.

It claimed that the malware encodes files on the victim’s device with the AES (advanced encryption standard) encryption algorithm.

After that, the local storage is cleared of all other files, leaving only the encrypted files with “enc” and a ransom note that says “readme_now.txt,”, the advisory stated.

To avoid being attacked by such viruses and malware, the central agency provided a number of recommendations.

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