US cybersecurity experts have successfully neutralized Russia’s most sophisticated virus, the Snake virus, the US Department of Justice announced.

The virus has been used by Russian security services to steal sensitive documents from hundreds of computer users working for NATO governments as well as journalists and embassy personnel since 2003.

Après 20 ans de fonctionnement dans le monde, le FBI vient de neutraliser le principal virus espion des services de renseignement russes, "Snake" (aka "Uroburos"). https://t.co/IFo1fmwNjE

— Cert-IST (@cert_ist) May 10, 2023

The creation and use of the Trojan horse, whose full functionality was unknown even to the hackers who used it, is linked to Center 16 of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), a former employee who was among the diplomats expelled from the EU after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Western intelligence agencies have been tracking Snake for two decades and cyber security experts regularly published warnings about the virus, but only now has it been possible to defeat it completely.

As experts explain, Snake is constantly being improved by its creators, preventing it from being blocked.

As a result, to neutralize the virus, the FBI created a special tool, codenamed Perseus, which, as part of Operation Medusa, began to issue commands through infected computers that caused the destruction of the very vital components of the malicious software – essentially repeating the plot of the ancient Greek myth of the Mermaid Medusa, who turned people to stone by looking at her and whom Perseus managed to behead, using a mirror shield.

Source: CNN Greece

Also read: Medusa ransomware | Claims responsibility for cyberattack on the Open University of Cyprus