The week following the attack on satirical publication Charlie Hebdo saw a sharp surge in cyber attacks against French online publication sites. Some 19,000 cases have been cited so far, according to a French cyber defense chief.
Vice Admiral Arnaud Coustilliere, head of cyber security for the French military, said that the attackers include some known hacking groups that are inclined to Islam.
Most of the hacks were categorized as a denial of service. Users experienced interruption in the network because it was clogged with traffic. The affected sites ranged from those in the tourism and food industries to those that belong to the military.
According to Arbor Networks, a private company that logs cyber security threats, France saw more than 1,070 DoS attacks on websites within just one day.
Coustilliere said the wave of cyber attacks is unprecedented in France. It is highly likely that the hacking groups choose sites which they believe are easy targets. These include sites with weak safeguards against cyber attacks or those that had been hacked in the past. An attacked website would display graffiti artists instead of its homepage.
Coustilliere further expressed that the wave of attacks on the private and government sectors were more likely to instigate annoyance than to cause harm.
"These attacks have no effect on the conduct of our operations," said Coustilliere.
General Director Guillaume Poupard of ANSSI, France's version of the NSA, described the attackers as simply vandals who only wanted to target small entities with a limited range of security features in their system.
"It's not a very complex attack," said Poupard. "They're looking for weak targets."
Some of the sites that were affected by the wave of attacks have been identified as Marianne, Le Parisien, 20 Minutes, France Info, Mediapart, L'Express, ZDNet, Slate and France Inter.
Coustilliere said that the wave of attacks came as the group's retaliation against the Paris peace rally on Sunday, Jan. 11.
The nation's defense ministry has decided to increase its security vigilance.
News of the cyber attacks came after the satirical magazine released its first issue since the spate of shootings across Paris, which left 17 people dead.
