A DDoS attacks puts down Internet in Liberia

Internet in Liberia was put down for several hours in couple of iterations, due to series of DDoS attacks, the Guardian reports. The attacks, based on the open-source malware called Mirai which was used in recent attacks against Dyn Inc DNS servers and Krebs on Security website, made the hijacked Internet of Things devices to attack and clog the only national Internet backbone cable in the country. While there are no clear views on why Liberia was a target, some experts suggest that the botnet operators are testing the large scale attacks, and warning that the case shows the attackers now have the capacity to knock down the Internet in states. Previous research has shown that the direct loss of a similar country-scale DDoS attacks can reach dozens to hundreds of millions of Euro per day.