back to article Mirai IoT botnet blamed for 'smashing Liberia off the internet'

The West African country of Liberia was allegedly flooded offline this week. Early indications are that miscreants blasted the nation's rudimentary net infrastructure using the same method that rendered hundreds of the world's most popular websites inaccessible at the end of October. Once again the Mirai IoT botnet has been …

  1. Ashley_Pomeroy

    It almost feels like the setup for a Twilight Zone episode, or Village of the Damned. Liberia is cut off from the rest of the world - and when they restore the connection, the people are somehow different. They no longer need computers to surf the internet, or eyes to see.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You have to wonder what the point is here. A totally screwed country, like it's parent the US, but why?

    1. Mark 85

      re: the point...

      Maybe these are live-fire tests. The miscreants are just testing their capabilities and control. Who knows what the real target will be.

      1. ecofeco Silver badge

        Re: re: the point...

        Test? 3 attacks this close together at this scale is full on cyber war.

        1. ecofeco Silver badge

          Re: re: the point...

          3 downvotes?

          An American general coined an aphorism "once is happenstance, twice coincidence, but three times is enemy action"...

          (thanks to Jemma for this reminder)

      2. Loud Speaker

        Re: re: the point...

        They probably thought they were attacking "Libertarians". I expect the next attack to target anyone with the name "Richard Head".

  3. Brian Miller

    DDOS or stupid ISP

    So actually, we really don't know if it was a DDOS or their ISP. The ISP could have claimed that they were offline due to a DDOS attack, when in reality a cable could have been unplugged.

    "While it is likely a local operator might have experienced a brief outage, we have no knowledge of a national Internet outage and there are no data to substantial [sic] that."

    As far as targets go, Liberia isn't one I would expect.

  4. lansalot

    Krebs says not:

    https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/11/did-the-mirai-botnet-really-take-liberia-offline/

  5. JulieM Silver badge
    Coat

    Is there a country whose Internet abbreviation is .kg ?

    They surely would be the obvious suspects to chase first .....

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