CRTC Executes CASL Warrant As Part Of Botnet Take-down

On December 3, 2015, the CRTC issued a release announcing its first-ever execution of a warrant under the Canadian anti-spam law (commonly known as "CASL"), as part of a coordinated international effort to disrupt a major botnet family.

The effort also involved law enforcement and cybersecurity authorities in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, as well as Microsoft and other private sector actors including ESET.

The target botnet family, known as "Dorkbot", can be exploited to capture personal information (particularly passwords) from users of compromised PCs, to send out spam, or to participate in distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks, as well as to propagate other malware.

The Dorkbot malware, which has been observed and studied by security researchers since 2011, is available in "kit" form, allowing relatively unsophisticated actors to establish and control their own botnets. This has led to wide distribution; Microsoft reports that there are more than 1