19,000 French Websites Attacked In Retaliation For 'Je Suis Charlie' Marches

France Comes Under Massive Cyber Attack
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France has come under 'unprecedented pressure from hackers since last week's terrorist attacks in Paris.

The head of cyberdefence for the French military said that as many as 19,000 websites had been attacked.

Admiral Arnaud Coustilliere said that thousands of French websites are now under cyber attack - he said as a retaliation for the millions that attended the 'Je Suis Charlie' marches in Paris.

With websites like 20 Minutes, Mediapart, France Info, Le Parisien and L"Express all hit, the attacks ranged from shutting down websites entirely to hacking in and placing symbols associated with jihadist groups on the front pages.

Admiral Coustilliere reports that the victims have ranged from pizza delivery websites to the official sites of military regiments.

The Admiral warned that this was "the first time that a country has been faced with such a large wave".

While the Telegraph reports that France has been hit with over 1000 DDoS attacks in the last 24 hours. To put that into perspective that's a quarter of the attacks that the US receives. While it may not sound like much, the US hosts 30x more websites than France.