Liberia

On the outskirts of Monrovia, a film crew knuckled down to work. Beyond the urban sprawl, they were distanced, if not safe, from the Ebola crisis playing out in the city. Liberia was already on a path to becoming the worst-affected nation in the West African epidemic, and nearly 5,000 lives would be lost by the time the World Health Organization gave the all clear. It was September 2014, and the end of the outbreak was not yet in sight.

Reports last week said that cyber-attacks had repeatedly overwhelmed this link making net access intermittent.

The authority said there was "no data to substantiate" the claim.

But it said one telecommunications company serving half the nation's mobile users did suffer attacks that repeatedly limited access.

No downtime

Recurrent attacks up to 3 November flooded the cable link with data, making net access intermittent.

Researchers said the attacks showed hackers trying different ways to use massive networks of hijacked machines to overwhelm high-value targets.

Experts said Liberia was attacked by the same group that caused web-wide disruption on 21 October.

Those attacks were among the biggest ever seen and made it hard to reach big web firms such as Twitter, Spotify and Reddit.

Short bursts

More than 4,800 people have died in Liberia since the outbreak began in West Africa in late 2013. The country celebrated what it thought was the end of Ebola in May, but then six more cases emerged the following month.

That started the clock over — 42 days or two incubation periods of 21 days — before Liberia could return to being free of transmission. On Thursday, officials announced they had made it without any more cases.