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

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

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.