More than 4,000 U.S. computers and networks have had malware files deleted by the FBI, which said it did not collect other information during the remote operations.

Law enforcement turns the PlugX malware’s own self-delete mechanism against it, nuking the China-linked trojan from thousands of US machines.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Tuesday disclosed that a court-authorized operation allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to delete PlugX malware from over 4,250 infected computers as part of a "multi-month law enforcement operation."

The US has again taken court-approved action to remove malware from privately-held internet-connected computers across the country, part of an effort by a number of countries to combat infections of a version of the PlugX malware from a Chinese-based group that has infected thousands of Windows machines around the world.

The U.S. Department of Justice announced today that the FBI has deleted Chinese PlugX malware from over 4,200 computers in networks across the United States.

The FBI and international partners sent a self-destruct command to PlugX malware More than 4,000 computers in the US alone were cleaned as a result The malware was developed by a Chinese state-sponsored group French cybersecurity firms and law enforcement agents,

The FBI deleted Chinese PlugX malware from thousands of devices in the US, using a technique developed by French cybersecurity firm Sekoia.io

To retrieve information from and send commands to the hacked machines, the malware connects to a command-and-control server that is operated by the hacking group. According to the FBI, at least 45,000 IP addresses in the US had back-and-forths with the command-and-control server since September 2023.

Federal authorities announced Tuesday that they have erased Chinese malware from thousands of computers across the United States.

The FBI worked with French law enforcement to squash a variant of the PlugX malware that spreads through USB drives.