Thousands of French websites hit by hackers following Charlie Hebdo attack
Thousands of websites in France have been hit by hackers in the wake of last week's terror attacks and the free speech rally that followed.
The Financial Times quotes the French military's head of cyber-defence, Arnaud Coustilliere, as describing the attacks on 19,000 websites in the last four days as "unprecedented".
Some sites have been knocked offline by denial-of-service attacks while others have had their homepages replaced by pro-Islamic State messages, according to Coustilliere.
“This is the response to last Sunday’s march,” he said.
Sites affected by the hackers include those of French businesses, universities and town councils.
Media websites Le Parisien, L'Express, 20 Minutes, France Inter, Mediapart and Marianne have also suffered downtime this week.
Their web host Oxalide tweeted about "an attack taking place against our infrastructure," the FT reports.