[3][4] Defence Intelligence was the security company that discovered the Mariposa botnet[5] in 2008, which consisted of 8 to 12 million individual zombie computers at the time of its dismantling in 2009.

[6] Defence Intelligence was founded in 2008 by Christopher Davis,[7] a Canadian security consultant who had previously aided in identifying an 18-year-old hacker [8] in 2000 that stole 26,000 credit card numbers[9] from e-commerce sites.

Chris Davis collaborated along with Dan Kaminsky to inform key agencies in the Canadian government about the DNS cache poisoning flaw.

[15][16] While no formal press release was made stating this change, numerous news articles began referring to Keith Murphy as CEO.

[21][22] The Spanish national police Civil Guard (Spain) arrested three men in February 2010 for suspected involvement with the Mariposa botnet.