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Cyclops Blink disruption

April 2022, State sponsored
Led by Federal Bureau of Investigation

Extended pass entry, last reviewed August 21, 2026

What was taken down?

Malware copied for evidentiary purposes and then removed from compromised C2 devices under court authorization; device owners still needed to independently patch underlying vulnerabilities.

See what happened

What happened to the people?

No individual outcomes are recorded against this entry.
Group accounted for: Not applicable

See people and accountability

Did it stay down?

Not established in the public record. No later activity is recorded against this entry.

See what happened afterward

A court-authorized DOJ/FBI operation copied and removed GRU/Sandworm malware from compromised firewall devices functioning as C2 nodes, severing thousands of downstream bots from those nodes.

Date
April 2022
Target
Cyclops Blink (attributed to Russia's GRU-linked Sandworm), botnet
Activity
State sponsored
Operational lead
FBI
Partners
DOJ[1]
Jurisdiction
Not established
Outcome
Malware copied for evidentiary purposes and then removed from compromised C2 devices under court authorization; device owners still needed to independently patch underlying vulnerabilities.
Status
Completed
Legal mechanism
Court-authorized remote remediation (Rule 41-type warrant).
Group accounted for
Not applicable

No individual is named against this entry in the cited record. That is a gap in what has been published rather than a finding that nobody was involved.

Group accounted for: Not applicable

The cited record does not say how large the group was or whether everyone involved has been identified.

See the organizations and roles behind this action

Not established in the public record. No later activity is recorded against this entry.

Numbered markers throughout this entry link to the source that supports the claim beside them.

Official sources

  1. [1]
    Court-authorized disruption of Cyclops Blink

    US DOJ, April 6, 2022, Source grade P1

    Establishes the court-authorized removal of GRU-linked malware from compromised C2 devices.

    No address recorded for this source. Publisher, title, and date are given so it can be retrieved from the publisher.

Coverage note. Added from deep-research aggregation pass. Not independently re-verified source-by-source to the same standard as the original 38-incident core; source_quality capped at S2/P2 pending a dedicated verification pass.