London (CNN) A British hacker whose cyberattacks took the nation of Liberia offline has been jailed for almost three years.

Daniel Kaye launched a series of attacks on Liberian cell phone operator Lonestar in October 2015, which became so powerful they knocked out the west African country's internet the following year.

Kaye, 30, had been hired to carry out the attacks by a senior employee at rival operator Cellcom, Britain's National Crime Agency said in a statement , although there is no suggestion that Cellcom was aware of the activity.

He pleaded guilty to creating and using a botnet, a series of computers connected in order to attack systems, and possessing criminal property last month. Kaye was sentenced on Friday at Blackfriars Crown Court in central London to two years and eight months in prison.

While living in Cyprus, Kaye used a botnet he had created to trigger repeated distributed denial of service (DDoS) requests on Lonestar, causing the company to spend around $600,000 in remedial action.

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