Canada’s Spy Agency Used First-of-Its-Kind Warrant to Clean Botnet-Infected Devices

Summary: Canada's Federal Court released a public version of a ruling on June 15 showing that CSIS used a threat reduction warrant, granted May 1, 2024 and renewed that August, to alter, degrade, and destroy botnet data on infected Canadian servers, SOHO routers, and IoT devices and cut them loose from two foreign-run botnets. Justice Catherine Kane issued confidential reasons in February 2026, and the redacted ruling does not identify whether the two adversaries were both Chinese, both Russian, or one of each.
Why it matters: The court flagged the energy sector among the targets and warned the adversaries could direct the botnets to probe and potentially disrupt Canadian infrastructure, while the malware removal leaves the underlying weaknesses in place - a reboot or factory reset can undo the fix and reopen the door to reinfection.

Read the original at The Hacker News ↗