French authorities led the operation with assistance from Paris-based cybersecurity company Sekoai. In a press release last year, French prosecutors said the malware — known as “PlugX” — had infected several million computers globally, including 3,000 devices located in France.

Sekoia said in a blog post that it developed the capability to send commands to infected devices in order to delete the PlugX malware. U.S. authorities said that the operation was used to delete the malware from more than 4,200 infected computers in the United States.