‘Spiderman’ Hacker Daniel Kaye Took Down Liberia’s Internet
This was a quite interesting and enlightening read! I was in Liberia at the time, from December 2016 through June 2017, doing a project for the Liberia Ministry of Health, and got acquainted with some people working for Cellcom. I also gained a great friend in one member of my team, who later worked briefly for Lonestar and is now employed by Orange. There aren&#x27;t that many opportunities for a young developer in Liberia outside of NGOs (fickle) and the telecoms. Obviously I forwarded the article to him (coincidentally, Israel is his name).<p>Liberia&#x27;s history is quite interesting indeed, and I actually like to compare it with the state of Israel -- both are the result of an unholy alliance of people wanting to help, on the one hand, and get rid of, on the other, another people in &quot;their&quot; land: African descendants in the USA, and Jewish people in Europe.<p>I went back to live in Liberia for three months earlier this year, to try and trace some ancestors of a family member. Things are dire, indeed, with an economy hit hard by the Ebola crisis, on top of years of military rule, civil war, corruption and abuse.<p>Apart from being used for resources, mainly by Firestone (now Bridgestone) for rubber, but also iron (Arcelor Mittal) and gold (large parts of which is being smuggled to UAE), it remains a strategic interest for the US (their presence is still huge, with CIA&#x27;s only listening post in Africa), meanwhile trade is controlled by the Indian and Lebanese communities.<p>Also of interest is that some Cherokee opted to join the free African Americans, with one ending up a chief of the Vai tribe, and possibly inspiring the Vai script with knowledge of the Cherokee script, recently posted here on HN: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21737230" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=21737230</a>