The FBI says it was authorized to mass-remove “PlugX” malware from more than 4,000 compromised machines in the United States

After obtaining the necessary court orders, the researchers, together with the Cyber Division of the Paris Prosecution Office, French Gendarmerie Cyber Unit C3N, the FBI, and the DoJ, ran the campaign and successfully removed the malware from infected computers.

The FBI said today that it removed Chinese malware from 4,258 US-based computers and networks by sending commands that forced the malware to use its "self-delete" function.