Kimwolf DDoS Botnet Operator Arrested in Canada Over DDoS-for-Hire Attacks

Kimwolf DDoS Botnet Operator Arrested in Canada Over DDoS-for-Hire Attacks Ravie LakshmananMay 22, 2026Cybercrime / Law Enforcement The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday announced the arrest of a Canadian man in connection with allegedly operating a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) botnet known as Kimwolf. In tandem, Jacob Butler (aka Dort), 23, Ottawa, Canada, has been charged with offenses related to the development and operation of the botnet. Kimwolf is assessed to be a variant of AISURU. "Kimwolf targeted infected devices which were traditionally 'firewalled' from the rest of the internet, such as digital photo frames and web cameras," the DoJ said. "The infected devices were enslaved by the botnet operators." "The operators then used a 'cybercrime-as-a-service' model to sell access to the infected devices to other cybercriminals. The operators and their customers forced the victim devices to participate in DDoS attacks, targeting computers and servers located throughout the world, including Department of Defense Information Network (DoDIN) IP addresses." Court documents show that Butler was linked to the administration of the KimWolf botnet through IP address, online account information, and Discord message records posted by an account called resi[.]to. That Butler was behind the Kimwolf botnet was first exposed by independent security journalist Brian Krebs earlier this February. At that time, the defendant claimed that he had not used the "Dort" persona since 2021 and that some other party was impersonating him after compromising his old account. The charges come exactly two months after U.S. authorities, in partnership with Canada and Germany, disrupted the command-and-control (C2) infrastructure associated with Kimwolf, AISURU, JackSkid, and Mossad as part of a court-authorized law enforcement operation. Per the DoJ, Kimwolf is estimated to have issued over 25,000 attack commands. Prior to their takedown, the AISURU/Kimwolf botnets were attributed to some of the record-setting DDoS attacks to date, flooding targets with junk traffic that peaked at 31.4 Terabits per second (Tbps). Besides Butler's arrest, seizure warrants have been unsealed targeting online services supporting 45 DDoS-for-hire platforms, allowing law enforcement to dismantle them. One of the platforms is said to have collaborated with Kimwolf. Butler has been charged with one count of aiding and abetting computer intrusion. If convicted, he faces up to 10 years in prison. Found this article interesting? Follow us on Google News, Twitter and LinkedIn to read more exclusive content we post. SHARE     Tweet Share Share SHARE  botnet, Cybercrime, cybersecurity, ddos, Internet of Things, Kimwolf, law enforcement ⚡ Top Stories This Week Hackers Used AI to Develop First Known Zero-Day 2FA Bypass for Mass Exploitation 18-Year-Old NGINX Rewrite Module Flaw Enables Unauthenticated RCE ThreatsDay Bulletin: PAN-OS RCE, Mythos cURL Bug, AI Tokenizer Attacks, and 10+ Stories Microsoft Patches 138 Vulnerabilities, Including DNS and Netlogon RCE Flaws cPanel CVE-2026-41940 Under Active Exploitation to Deploy Filemanager Backdoor ⚡ Weekly Recap: Linux Rootkit, macOS Crypto Stealer, WebSocket Skimmers and More [Webinar] How Modern Attack Paths Cross Code, Pipelines, and Cloud Ollama Out-of-Bounds Read Vulnerability Allows Remote Process Memory Leak Mini Shai-Hulud Worm Compromises TanStack, Mistral AI, Guardrails AI and More Packages On-Prem Microsoft Exchange Server CVE-2026-42897 Exploited via Crafted Email Microsoft's MDASH AI System Finds 16 Windows Flaws Fixed in Patch Tuesday Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller Auth Bypass Actively Exploited to Gain Admin Access Windows Zero-Days Expose BitLocker Bypasses And CTFMON Privilege Escalation New Exim BDAT Vulnerability Exposes GnuTLS Builds to Potential Code Execution New Fragnesia Linux Kernel LPE Grants Root Access via Page Cache Corruption Four OpenClaw Flaws Enable Data Theft, Privilege Escalation, and Persistence Load More ▼ ⭐ Featured Resources [Webinar] Learn How to Handle Critical SOC Alerts With AI Support [eBook] Get the 3-Number SOC Diagnostic to Reduce Queue Risk [Guide] Stop Email Fraud Before It Turns Into Ransomware Damage Identify Internal Attack Surfaces More Efficiently With a Free Assessment