Mirai Botnet Knocks Liberia’s Internet Offline

Following the news about an unprecedented cyber attack on Liberia that knocked the country’s entire internet offline, hackers reportedly targeted the nation’s infrastructure using the Mirai botnet – the same method that was used to shut down hundreds of the world’s most popular websites, includuing Twitter, Spotify & Reddit, at the end of last month. Art Swift, President at the prpl Foundation, a not-for-profit organisations that aims to make the Internet of Things more secure commented below.

Art Swift, President at the prpl Foundation:

“This new Mirai-based DDoS attack points out the critical need for IoT device manufacturers to eliminate built-in back doors and to stop the practice of shipping devices with either hard coded or difficult to change default user names and passwords.  Eliminating these practices might be the single most important step into closing millions of wide-open cyber attack doors. The prpl foundation’s recent smart home security report ranks changing default IoT user names and passwords as one of it’s top 5 smart home security recommendations.”