Canadian Court Grants CSIS First-Ever Warrant to Hack Private Devices to Disarm Foreign State-Linked Botnets

Summary

For the first time, Canada's Federal Court has authorized the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) to hack into privately owned routers, servers, and household internet devices across Canada to disarm foreign-controlled botnets. These botnets, assessed to likely include state-linked actors such as China, were using compromised Canadian devices as trojan horses to attack critical Canadian infrastructure from within. The court acknowledged that this power would otherwise be a crime, marking a significant expansion of CSIS's domestic cyber operations.