Feds Bust 23-Year-Old Behind 2M-Device DDoS Botnet

US and Canadian authorities arrested the alleged operator of the KimWolf botnet that hijacked roughly 2 million devices.

Feds Bust 23-Year-Old Behind 2M-Device DDoS Botnet

Jacob Butler, a 23-year-old Canadian known online as "Dort," is in custody after a joint US-Canadian operation took him down. The charge: running the KimWolf distributed denial-of-service botnet.

KimWolf allegedly infected approximately 2 million devices, turning them into weapons for DDoS attacks. That's a massive zombie army by any standard.

Butler was arrested and charged by authorities on both sides of the border, signaling serious cross-border coordination on cybercrime enforcement.

DDoS botnets remain one of the most persistent threats on the internet. They hijack everyday devices — routers, IoT gadgets, poorly secured machines — and weaponize them to flood targets with traffic. At 2 million devices deep, KimWolf was no small operation.

The arrest sends a clear message: run a botnet, and eventually the feds come knocking.