By Steve Neavling
The FBI has sabotaged a piece of advanced malware that elite Russian spies have used to steal secrets from computers worldwide for more than 20 years, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
FBI technical experts identified and disabled the malware wielded by Russia’s FSB security service against an undisclosed number of computers across more than 50 countries, including the U.S.
FSB operatives used the spyware to “access and exfiltrate sensitive international relations documents, as well as other diplomatic communications,” the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a separate report.
“Through a high-tech operation that turned Russian malware against itself, U.S. law enforcement has neutralized one of Russia’s most sophisticated cyberespionage tools, used for two decades to advance Russia’s authoritarian objectives,” Lisa O. Monaco, the deputy attorney general, said in a statement.
The FBI used a digital tool known as Perseus to disable the spyware from victim computers this month.
