Canadian Man Arrested for Operating Kimwolf Botnet

The US Justice Department announced on Thursday that a Canadian man has been arrested for operating the recently disrupted Kimwolf DDoS botnet. The suspect, 23-year-old Jacob Butler of Ottawa, known online as ‘Dort’, is accused of administering the botnet and has been charged in the US on one count of aiding and abetting computer intrusion.  Butler has been arrested in Canada and the US is seeking his extradition. If found guilty, he faces up to 10 years in prison. “Law enforcement allegedly connected Butler to the administration of the KimWolf botnet through IP address, online account information, transaction records, and online messaging application records obtained through the issuance of legal process,” the DoJ said. In March, the Justice Department announced the disruption of several IoT botnets used to carry out DDoS attacks. One of them was Kimwolf, described as the Android-focused successor of a botnet named Aisuru, which was also targeted by authorities. Kimwolf made headlines for abusing residential proxy networks to expand and for ensnaring approximately 2 million devices.  Aisuru and Kimwolf were both linked to a record-breaking DDoS attack that peaked at 31.4 Tbps. When it announced the disruption of the botnets in March, the DoJ said law enforcement agencies in Canada and Germany also targeted botnet administrators and infrastructure, but did not say whether anyone had been arrested. Butler may have been one of the individuals targeted in Canada at the time. “In addition to Butler’s arrest, the Central District of California unsealed seizure warrants which targeted online services supporting 45 DDoS-for-hire platforms. These seizures broadly disrupted the DDoS platforms, including at least one that collaborated with Butler’s KimWolf botnet,” the DoJ said on Thursday. Related: ‘First VPN’ Cybercrime Service Disrupted, Administrator Arrested Related: Microsoft Disrupts Malware-Signing Service Run by ‘Fox Tempest’ Related: RedVDS Cybercrime Service Disrupted by Microsoft and Law Enforcement WRITTEN BY Eduard Kovacs Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is senior managing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher before starting a career in journalism in 2011. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering. More from Eduard Kovacs Google’s Surge in Chrome Vulnerability Discoveries Likely Driven by AI Anthropic Silently Patches Claude Code Sandbox Bypass Real-World ICS Security Tales From the Trenches Drupal to Patch Highly Critical Vulnerability at Risk of Quick Exploitation Microsoft Disrupts Malware-Signing Service Run by ‘Fox Tempest’  Critical Vulnerability Exposes Industrial Robot Fleets to Hacking Millions Impacted Across Several US Healthcare Data Breaches 7-Eleven Data Breach Confirmed After ShinyHunters Ransom Demand Latest News In Other News: Industrial Router Exploitation, CISA KEV Nomination Form, Gas Station Hacking ‘First VPN’ Cybercrime Service Disrupted, Administrator Arrested TrendAI Patches Apex One Zero-Day Exploited in the Wild Grafana Says Codebase and Other Data Stolen via TanStack Supply Chain Attack Cisco Patches Critical Vulnerability in Secure Workload Ocean Emerges From Stealth With $28M for Agentic Email Security Platform Apple Rejected 2 Million App Store Submissions in 2025 for Security and Fraud Prevention Drupal Patches Highly Critical Vulnerability Exposing Websites to Hacking Trending Virtual Event: Threat Detection And Incident Response Summit May 20, 2026 Delve into big-picture strategies to reduce attack surfaces, improve patch management, conduct post-incident forensics, and tools and tricks needed in a modern organization. Register Webinar: Third-Party Risk In Practice June 4, 2026 Organizations are investing heavily in third-party risk management, but breaches, delays, and blind spots continue to persist. Join this live webinar as we examine the gap between how organizations think their third-party risk programs are performing and what’s actually happening in practice. Register People on the Move Joe Chen has become Chief Technology Officer at Trellix. Usercentrics has named Pawan Hegde as COO and Elena Ignatova as CPTO. SecureAuth has named Mark van Oppen as Chief Revenue Officer. More People On The Move Expert Insights Caught Off Guard: Securing AI After It Hits Production As enterprises rush AI projects into production, security teams are increasingly being forced into reactive mode. (Joshua Goldfarb) Cyber Resilience Is The New Business Continuity Plan The organizations best prepared to face disruption are those that align security, continuity and risk management around what the business cannot afford to lose. (Steve Durbin) Enhancing Data Center Security Without Sacrificing Performance For AI data centers, where the stakes are the highest and performance constraints are the tightest, security and performance are no longer a zero-sum game. (Nadir Izrael) Is The SOC Obsolete, And We Just Haven’t Admitted It Yet? Many AI-first enterprises have already embraced sovereign architectures for general AI initiatives; cybersecurity—and the SOC—should be next. (Danelle Au) The Mythos Moment: Enterprises Must Fight Agents With Agents Only with the right platform and an agentic, AI-driven defense, will enterprises be able to protect themselves in the agentic era. (Etay Maor) Flipboard Reddit Whatsapp Email