Preparations for a cyber-attack on Ukraine have been thwarted by the FBI.
It seized a website that was helping communicate with home routers infected with malware that would carry out the digital bombardment.
More than 500,000 routers in 54 countries had been infected by the «dangerous» malware and the FBI is now trying to clean up infected machines. The Kremlin has denied an allegation by Ukraine that Russia was planning a cyber-attack on the country.
A key step in thwarting the attack came on 23 May when a US court ordered website registrar Verisign to hand over control of the ToKnowAll.com domain to the FBI.
Infected machines regularly contacted that domain to update the malware with which they were infected. By taking control of the domain, the FBI will be able to log the location of infected machines and co-ordinate efforts to clean them up.