The Department of Justice has remotely cleaned thousands of computers infected with Chinese malware

The Department of Justice and the FBI shared today that they have completed a project to remove malware used by Chinese hackers from computers in the United States. The effort was essentially a court-approved counter-hack that remotely deleted malware known as PlugX from more than 4,200 computers. The agencies will notify U.S. owners of those affected devices about the process through their Internet service providers.

According to the Ministry of Justice press releasehacking groups known as Mustang Panda and Twill Typhoon received support from the Chinese government to use PlugX to infect, control, and collect information from computers outside China. The operation to remove the PlugX malware from US computers began in August 2024. It was carried out in cooperation with French law enforcement authorities and with Sekoia.io, a private cybersecurity company based in France. Sekoia.io found PlugX malware in more than… 170 countries.

The Mustang Panda group has been conducting infiltration efforts around the world since at least 2014. For example, cybersecurity company ESET Found Mustang Panda gained access to the computers of freight forwarding companies in Norway, Greece and the Netherlands in March. The group was one of several China-linked hacking organizations identified as threatening communications systems across the Asia-Pacific region Reports Last summer.