The agency is the federal technology arm to combat cyber attacks and guard the cyber space against phishing and hacking assaults and similar online attacks.

The Android botnet gets distributed through third-party websites or applications downloaded from untrusted/unknown sources, the agency said.

"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," PTI quoted from the advisory.

'Daam' is also capable of hacking phone call recordings, contacts, gaining access to camera, modifying device passwords, capturing screenshots, stealing SMSes, downloading/uploading files, etc. and transmitting to the C2 (command-and-control) server from the victim's (affected persons) device, the advisory said.

The malware, it said, utilises the AES (advanced encryption standard) encryption algorithm to code files in the victim's device. Other files are then deleted from the local storage, leaving only the encrypted files with ".enc" extension and a ransom note that says "readme_now.txt", the advisory said.