Aisuru and Kimwolf DDoS Botnets Disrupted in International Operation
The US Department of Justice announced a successful international operation to disrupt four major IoT botnets—Aisuru, Kimwolf, JackSkid, and Mossad—that collectively compromised over 3 million devices including DVRs, cameras, and routers. The botnets issued more than 315,000 DDoS attack commands, with Aisuru and Kimwolf linked to a record-breaking 31.4 Tbps DDoS attack in February 2026. Law enforcement in the US, Germany, and Canada seized infrastructure including domains, virtual servers, and other assets used by the botnet operators.
Summary
The US Department of Justice announced a successful international operation to disrupt four major IoT botnets—Aisuru, Kimwolf, JackSkid, and Mossad—that collectively compromised over 3 million devices including DVRs, cameras, and routers. The botnets issued more than 315,000 DDoS attack commands, with Aisuru and Kimwolf linked to a record-breaking 31.4 Tbps DDoS attack in February 2026. Law enforcement in the US, Germany, and Canada seized infrastructure including domains, virtual servers, and other assets used by the botnet operators.
Full text
The US Justice Department on Thursday announced the results of an international operation to disrupt several IoT botnets used by threat actors to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The operation targeted the Aisuru, Kimwolf, JackSkid, and Mossad botnets and involved several major cybersecurity and tech companies, as well as law enforcement in Germany and Canada. Authorities said the botnets have compromised more than 3 million devices as of March 2026, including DVRs, cameras, Wi-Fi routers, and other IoT devices. Aisuru has made headlines over the past several months for its massive DDoS attacks, including several record-breaking attacks. It is tightly connected to Kimwolf, which is essentially Aisuru’s Android-focused successor. Kimwolf was in the spotlight for abusing residential proxy networks to expand and for ensnaring roughly 2 million devices. Aisuru and Kimwolf were both linked by Cloudflare in February to the largest DDoS attack recorded to date, which peaked at 31.4 Tbps.Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading. According to the DoJ, cybercriminals used the Aisuru botnet to issue over 200,000 DDoS attack commands, while Kimwolf issued 25,000 such commands. JackSkid and Mossad are lesser-known botnets, but the DoJ said they issued 90,000 and 1,000 DDoS attack commands, respectively. AWS, which was involved in the takedown, reported that just like Kimwolf, the JackSkid botnet used residential proxy networks to grow. The botnet disruption efforts included seizing multiple internet domains, virtual servers, and other infrastructure used by Aisuru, Kimwolf, JackSkid, and Mossad. The DoJ said law enforcement agencies in Canada and Germany “conducted their own operations targeting botnet administrators and botnet infrastructure”, but did not say whether anyone was arrested. Related: SystemBC Infects 10,000 Devices After Defying Law Enforcement Takedown Related: Tycoon 2FA Phishing Platform Dismantled in Global Takedown 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. 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Indicators of Compromise
- malware — Aisuru
- malware — Kimwolf
- malware — JackSkid
- malware — Mossad