Doctor, heal thyself. Or, in this case, malware, self-destruct. A joint press release from the US Justice Department and the FBI has announced a multi-month law enforcement operation involving multiple international partners that has succeeded in removing malware from over 4,000 US computers—by telling it to delete itself.
The malware in question is known as PlugX, and it's a particularly nasty remote access trojan that's believed to have been around since 2008 and is said to have been a favourite tool of a hacking group referred to as "Mustang Panda"(via Gizmodo). The malware receives commands via a control server, one of which the FBI gained access to with the help of the French authorities in order to identify the IP addresses of PlugX-affected computers.
