DDoS attack that disrupted internet was largest of its kind in history, experts say

Dyn, the victim of last week's denial of service attack, said it was orchestrated using a weapon called the Mirai botnet as the 'primary source of malicious attack'

• Major cyber attack disrupts internet service across Europe and US

The cyber-attack that brought down much of America's internet last week was caused by a new weapon called the Mirai botnet and was likely the largest of its kind in history, experts said.

The victim was the servers of Dyn, a company that controls much of the internet's domain name system (DNS) infrastructure. It was hit on 21 October and remained under sustained assault for most of the day, bringing down sites including Twitter, the Guardian, Netflix, Reddit, CNN and many others in Europe and the US.