On May 9, the US Department of Justice announced that US cybersecurity experts had successfully neutralized the Snake virus, which was used by Russian security services to steal sensitive documents from hundreds of computer users working for NATO governments, as well as journalists and embassy staff since 2003.

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 of which was among the diplomats expelled from of the EU after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Western intelligence agencies have been tracking Snake for two decades, and cyber security experts have regularly issued warnings about the virus, but only now has it been fully defeated.

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 with her appearance and in which Perseus managed to decapitate her with hair snakes, using a mirror shield.