KYIV, May 23 - Russia may be preparing to launch a sophisticated and destructive cyber attack on Ukraine after infecting 500,000 routers globally with hacking software, a U.S. technology company reported Wednesday.

The finding reported by Cisco’s Talos cyber intelligence unit corroborates a warning from the Ukrainian security service SBU earlier Wednesday that Russia may carry out a cyber strike on Saturday.

Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on Saturday is hosting the final of the European Champions League between Liverpool and Real Madrid with thousands of soccer fans from across Europe expected to attend the game.

“The revealed malware indicates the preparation for the cyber attack on the sites of the national critical infrastructure,” the SBU said in a statement. The move is “aimed at destabilizing the situation during the Champions League final.”

The U.S. government said late on Wednesday that it would seek to wrestle hundreds of thousands of infected routers and storage devices from the control of hackers who security researchers warned were planning to use the "botnet" to attack Ukraine.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania gave the FBI permission to seize an internet domain that authorities charge a Russian hacking group known as Sofacy was using to control infected devices, Reuters reported.

The order allows them to direct the devices to communicate with an FBI-controlled server, which will be used to query location to pass on to authorities around the globe who can remove malware from infected equipment.

"This operation is the first step in the disruption of a botnet that provides the Sofacy actors with an array of capabilities that could be used for a variety of malicious purposes, including intelligence gathering, theft of valuable information, destructive or disruptive attacks, and the misattribution of such activities," Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers said in a statement.

The U.S. government announced the takedown effort after Cisco Systems early on Wednesday released a report on the hacking campaign that it said targeted devices from Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear, TP-Link and QNAP.

Cisco said the largest number of infections from the VPNFilter malware were in Ukraine, which led it to believe Russia was planning an attack on that country.

Cisco shared technical details with the United States and Ukraine governments as well as rivals who sell security software, hardware and services. (nr/rt/ez)