19,000 French Websites Hit By DDoS, Defaced In Wake of Terror Attacks

An anonymous reader writes Since the three day terror attack that started in France on January 7 with the attack on satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, 19,000 websites of French-based companies have been targeted by cyber attackers. This unprecedented avalanche of cyber attacks targeted both government sites and that of big and small businesses. Most were low-level DDoS attacks, and some were web defacements. Several websites in a number of towns in the outskirts of Paris have been hacked and covered with an image of an ISIS flag. The front pages of the official municipality websites have been covered with the Jihadist militant group's black flag. In a report, Radware researchers noted that Islamic hacker group AnonGhost has also launched a "digital jihad" against France.

Comments

Beats using bullets

[Anonymous Coward]

A slightly better form of protest than AK47's I guess.

Re:Beats using bullets

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Can you think of any good targets? Religious radicals with a...vehemently...nostalgic enthusiasm for an imaginary medieval ideal tend not to be on the cutting edge of technology and culture production.

Come to think of it, a movement with that sort of ready access to alienated 20something guys who loath the foundations of the society around them could probably be competitive in the production of Punk, and maybe some metal subgenres, except that they think all that stuff is haram. Oh well.

Re:Beats using bullets

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Inconveniently, there isn't enough epistemological common ground for asking for justification to work terribly well. Religions based on revelation(which includes islam, along with the other Abrahamic monotheisms, and a number of others to greater or lesser degrees) consider 'because god said so.' to be not only not a shoddy cop-out; but to be the best, most certain, category of justification.

Exactly how it is that they came to know that god said so(since he didn't say so to them; but allegedly to some other guy, now dead, can be a little touchy; but I've rarely found it to be a productive avenue for discussion.

Re:Beats using bullets

[nbauman]

If you think that they really believe in God, any more than Christians, Jews and members of Western religions do, then you should take a political science course. Religion is just an excuse to steal things from other people.

The only ones who believe that God bullshit are the dumb people on the bottom, like the ones who voted for George W. Bush and the Republicans against their own interests.

John Dean, the presidential counsel who ratted on Nixon, wrote a book about how the Republican party discovered the strategy of appealing to stupid religious hicks with a bait and switch on abortion, gays and other social hot-button issues, in order to manipulate them into voting for conservative candidates who would cut taxes on the rich along with government services that actually benefited the stupid religious hicks. Dean wrote a series of articles about this on Findlaw, if you want to look them up and read them free.

Re:Beats using bullets

[CohibaVancouver]

Can you think of any good targets?

Saudi Arabia - Sheiks, bankers. After all, they're the one pulling the strings of their 'jihadist' puppets.

Re:Beats using bullets

[circletimessquare]

post scandalous images of the prophet on their forums

anyways, internet technology is a product of the secular institutions of the west. i'm not sure why or how they reconcile the use of modern technology with their medieval abusive "beliefs." of course, they don't, they're violent morons incapable of critical thought

Re: Beats using bullets

[cold fjord]

Iraq still had engineering and medical schools after it was liberated. The Bush administration facilitated partnerships between Iraqi institutions and those in the US and Europe, ending Iraq's isolation from the international community and helped its efforts to rebuild after the long night of Saddam's rule.

Saddam did immense damage to the country by diverting its resources into arms deals and building palaces instead of education, medicine, and other necessities. That is before you get into the political repression, mass murder, and so on.

The Islamists that you can't quite bring yourself to condemn specifically targeted Iraqi intellectuals for murder, people like professors, doctors, and engineers.

Pro tip: Don't let your butt hurt over policy disagreements cause you to lie, i.e. "until GWB destroyed them".

Irony alert: Somehow I can't imagine you suggesting to any other country or group of terrorists that they not attack another country full of engineers: the US. Funny how that works.

Re:Beats using bullets

[gl4ss]

lots of good targets.. hack their sms gateways, post shit about the people who try to benefit from west hate(plenty of such people. they benefit from it locally, like selling usa flags for burning you know, most of them don't really care shit about what happens 10 km from them), hack the islamist nations sites and put on information on how to bypass their censorships, links to news sites, links to just sites about their own countries laws so they understand that the local warlords are fucking them up the ass and that the tribe shit belongs to 17th century and they - their ability to learn how technology works, the future of their occupational careers, the future of their wealth and health - is all getting fucked up by extremists who claim the west is exploiting them when the worst exploiter for any one of them is the village chief and corruption! corruption includes paying thugs to go shoot neighboring village up with ak47's to "gain advantage" on price of khat or whatever the fuck their petty dealings center around.

Re:comment

[cold fjord]

Is it OK with you if the French at least inconvenience the people trying to massacre them?

"False flag"? Don't be an ass.

Re:Better a DDOS

[cold fjord]

Unfortunately it is an "AND", not an "OR".

Re:comment

[Noah Haders]

I'd say the biggest blow to civil liberties was when islamists went into a newspaper office and killed everybody. that's what I call a chilling effect.

Re:A positive step

[Anonymous Coward]

You are just seeing the end of the Marshall Plan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M...

Basically the Marshall plan made europe beholden to US interests. In the name of fighting the Soviets. Now that the Soviets are fairly well neutered funding has basically unwound out of those countries. You are seeing a return to norms. It will not take many incidents for people to remember their original loyalties. Europeans traditionally are *very* loyalist to their countries. Even my family members in the US still relate back to where they came from in Europe.

RPGs are no match for a thousand years of military advances while they neuter themselves with infighting.
And what will you power those supper fighters with? Solar, wind power, or unicorn farts? The middle east holds major portions of oil. The Russians hold the other portion and the US the other portion. Europe basically has none other than the paper trails of companies that own it abroad.

Re:I'm not sure I understand why...

[gman003]

There's nothing in the Bible about abortion or gun laws, and barely anything about homosexuality, yet those are like the three biggest religious-right political issues. And hell, Jesus was basically more pro-communist than Lenin, but during the Cold War, no siree, it's us good Christian capitalists versus those damned heathen commies. So obviously "it wasn't in scripture" isn't going to stop religious nuts.

I *have* read the text

[msobkow]

I have read the text a couple of times. And it clearly states that Muslims are to DEFEND themselves against oppressors without mercy, but to live amongst them in peace if they are not being attacked.

But that doesn't play into the ideology of fanatics, so they conveniently skip those caveats when quoting their text.

Much as Pat Robertson and Westboro Baptist are very selective about their edited "quotes".