The U.S. Justice Department announced Tuesday that the United States and its allies have dismantled a large electronic surveillance system that Russian intelligence used for years to spy on computers around the world, the New York Times reported.

In a separate statement, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the system, dubbed the “Viper” malware network, was the “most sophisticated electronic espionage tool” in the Russian Central Security Service’s arsenal. including government networks, research facilities and journalists.

According to The New York Times, Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSP, a cybersecurity and infrastructure security agency, used the “Snake” system to access and steal international relations documents and other diplomatic communications from the NATO country.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency added: A Russian company used a “snake” to penetrate computers in more than 50 countries, including several US institutions, including education, small businesses and media companies. Government facilities. , financial services, bio-manufacturing and communications,” according to The New York Times.

Senior Justice Department officials praised the apparent destruction of the malware, according to The New York Times.

In a recently unsealed 33-page court filing from a Brooklyn federal judge, cybersecurity agent Taylor Fury explained how the effort, dubbed Operation Medusa, came about.

According to court documents, the “Snake” system operates as a network that interconnects infected computers around the world. To take advantage of this, the FBI used infected computers in the United States to infiltrate systems and execute programs that bypassed the code to “permanently disable the network” on each infected computer.

According to the newspaper, the U.S. government has been investigating Snake-related malware for nearly two decades, and according to court filings, a unit of the FSB known as Turla operated the network from Ryazan, Russia.