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19,000 French Websites Hit By DDoS, Defaced In Wake of Terror Attacks 206

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

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 16, 2015 @08:42PM (#48836217)

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

    • by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Friday January 16, 2015 @09:03PM (#48836319)

      It's a step in the right direction.

      Now, instead of just posting a graphic of a flag, how about posting some justification? Explain what you are objecting to and why you find it objectionable.

      You have the attention of the media.

      Unless you're a bunch of teenage script kiddies doing this for the lulz.

      • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Friday January 16, 2015 @09:21PM (#48836431) Journal
        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: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by nbauman ( 624611 )

          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 st

          • Sure; but do you think the suckers hand-delivering bombs, starting gun battles with entire municipal police forces, and doing similarly thankless grunt work are the masterminds, or the stupid religious hicks?

            I don't doubt the presence of cynics; I'd just start looking for them in the cushy gigs, rather than the morgue.
      • Explain what you are objecting to and why you find it objectionable.

        Perhaps they're mad as hell that we don't have sufficient gender diversity in our IT industry.

  • Better a DDOS (Score:4, Interesting)

    by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Friday January 16, 2015 @08:50PM (#48836267) Homepage Journal

    Better a DDOS than murder.

  • Erm Yeah Right (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rtb61 ( 674572 ) on Friday January 16, 2015 @08:51PM (#48836271) Homepage

    Organisation should never overplay their hand, otherwise people know who is really holding the cards an what is actually in their hands. There is real value in the idea that the truth will set you free. Free from the fears of those who wish to drive your choices via the fear the attempt to create and free from the lies that others would seek to trap you in. Oh look who is having a security conference, uh huh.

  • Yawn.

    These guys are not quite as boring as Anonymous.

  • by Narcocide ( 102829 ) on Friday January 16, 2015 @09:02PM (#48836307) Homepage

    Or is the layout just broken again?

    • It seems only some posts were ***allah ackbar***ced.
    • Could be. Seems like stackoverflow [stackoverflow.com] was defaced as well.
    • by rHBa ( 976986 )
      Over the last few days I noticed that some of the height of the buttons was too short for their text and the search input was also shorter than normal but that seems to be fixed now (FF35/Linux).
  • by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Friday January 16, 2015 @09:19PM (#48836405)

    It seems the attacks only targeted known vulnerabilities in Drupal and Joomla. Sites that did not use them, and site that were up to date, just experienced high loads.

    • Newsflash: Crappy webpages with crappy security get hacked by scriptkiddies using ancient exploits. More at 11 after the movie.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 16, 2015 @09:22PM (#48836437)

    So basically less annoying than spam.

    Pretty sure the correct solution is ban any method of communication which the government can't listen in on. That'll mean a camera with microphone in every bedroom, of course.

    Those guys in Paris are failed terrorists unless they succeed in inciting acts of terror by European government against their citizens - and there is nothing more terrorising than the thought you're always being listened to by men with guns with the power to lock you up, no matter who you intend to communicate with - in which case they will have been successful terrorists.

    Just as, after the first few months of 9/11, there was clearly nothing to fear except from US government finding an excuse to destroy freedom. Again, the book on those terrorists could have been closed as "killed a lot of people, but did not change the American way of life", but instead we find they were successful too, because they incited the US government to destroy freedom.

  • by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Friday January 16, 2015 @09:32PM (#48836479) Journal

    Ahem ... this clearly has nothing, NOTHING to do with Islam, which is a religion of peace, blah blah.

  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday January 16, 2015 @09:35PM (#48836495)

    ... there's this issue with blasphemy and/or images of the Prophet. According to this NY Times article Islam’s Problem With Blasphemy [nytimes.com] by Mustafa Akyol, there is actually *no* prohibition in the Quran and such things were only added later as part of Shariah Law, by people wanting control:

    The only source in Islamic law that all Muslims accept indisputably is the Quran. And, conspicuously, the Quran decrees no earthly punishment for blasphemy — or for apostasy (abandonment or renunciation of the faith), a related concept. Nor, for that matter, does the Quran command stoning, female circumcision or a ban on fine arts.

    Tellingly, severe punishments for blasphemy and apostasy appeared when increasingly despotic Muslim empires needed to find a religious justification to eliminate political opponents.

    In addition, Muslim extremists seem selective in their outrage:

    The Quran praises other prophets — such as Abraham, Moses and Jesus — and even tells Muslims to “make no distinction” between these messengers of God. Yet for some reason, Islamist extremists seem to obsess only about the Prophet Muhammad.

    Even more curiously, mockery of God — what one would expect to see as the most outrageous blasphemy — seems to have escaped their attention as well.

    Finally, the action *actually* recommended by the Quran is simply: Do not sit with them ...

    Before all that politically motivated expansion and toughening of Shariah, though, the Quran told early Muslims, who routinely faced the mockery of their faith by pagans: “God has told you in the Book that when you hear God’s revelations disbelieved in and mocked at, do not sit with them until they enter into some other discourse; surely then you would be like them.”

    Just “do not sit with them” — that is the response the Quran suggests for mockery. Not violence. Not even censorship.

    • by fnj ( 64210 ) on Friday January 16, 2015 @10:16PM (#48836609)

      there is actually *no* prohibition [of blasphemy] in the Quran...
      the Quran decrees no earthly punishment for blasphemy — or for apostasy (abandonment or renunciation of the faith), a related concept.

      Koran (4:89) - "They wish that you should disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them, until they emigrate in the way of God; then, if they turn their backs, take them, and slay them wherever you find them; take not to yourselves any one of them as friend or helper."

      Is there some problem with the translation? Seems fairly clear to me.

      • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday January 16, 2015 @11:45PM (#48836907)

        there is actually *no* prohibition [of blasphemy] in the Quran... the Quran decrees no earthly punishment for blasphemy — or for apostasy (abandonment or renunciation of the faith), a related concept.

        Koran (4:89) - "They wish that you should disbelieve as they disbelieve, and then you would be equal; therefore take not to yourselves friends of them, until they emigrate in the way of God; then, if they turn their backs, take them, and slay them wherever you find them; take not to yourselves any one of them as friend or helper."

        Is there some problem with the translation? Seems fairly clear to me.

        Take it up with the guy (who I presume is a Muslim) who wrote the NYT article, I was simply quoting and conceding that he probably knows more about this than I (and most /.'ers) do. However, according to this Qur’an 4:89 Commentary [theamericanmuslim.org], the quote you listed is (commonly) taken out of context (the link has the full verse) and in context really means:

        ... this verse also only commands Muslims to fight those who practice oppression or persecution, or attack the Muslims.

        ... These verses were revealed by God to Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him), at the time when Muslims were attacked by the non-Muslims of Makkah on a regular basis.

        I am not even remotely knowledgeable, but it seems like something open to a bit of interpretation. Wouldn't it be nice if those people doing the interpretation and passing that on to their followers, focused on interpretations that involved killing fewer people?

        • This line of argument appears to justify violence that is suggested in the book. And there might be some, in at least one interpretation which we can't prove incorrect. Clearly counter productive to your (and mine) goal of reducing violence. What do you think?

          I prefer arguing against violence whether or not any book recommends it.

        • by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Saturday January 17, 2015 @04:29AM (#48837665) Homepage Journal

          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".

          • 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.

            Yes, all their religious officials have to do is spin any non-acceptance of their religion as an attack on it, and then they have justified any amount of violence. Please, think this through a little more.

          • by jez9999 ( 618189 )

            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 they can interpret ridicule or criticism as an attack or an oppression, can't they? That's the trouble with interpretation, anyone can put their own spin on it and use it to justify their actions.

      • So they get to slay me only if I tried to chat them out of being friends with their imaginary buddy? Seems excessive if you ask me, but where did anyone at Charlie Hebdo try to talk them out of the friendship with their personal big guy?

        You know, it's easy to not be friends with someone: Ignore them.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gman003 ( 1693318 )

      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.

      • Jesus was the ultimate non-violent guy. Hell, he even let himself get killed rather than resisting it. Along with all of that "turn the other cheek" and "love your enemy" stuff, he's basically the original hippie. Love and peace and all the shit.

        Oddly, exactly those that claim that they're all Jesus and "reborn" and "accepted him as their savior" and whatnot usually aren't big on that shit but prefer all the vengeful god bull from the Old book.

    • by quenda ( 644621 )

      The argument over images is not unique to Islam. Many protestants regard images of Jesus or saints as idolatry. They just don't tend to kill people over it.

  • Terror attacks (Score:5, Interesting)

    by manu0601 ( 2221348 ) on Friday January 16, 2015 @09:55PM (#48836557)
    Please do not use the terms "terror attacks" or "terrorism" for the murders at Charlie Hebdo. This is not terrorism, as french people are not afraid. Otherwise there would not have been millions in the streets, vulnerable to real terrorist attacks.

    On the other hand, french journalists are afraid because they feel they could ne the next attacked, and their reports suggest terror is widespread, but it is a fake perception for the whole french society.

    • It is terrorism. It is intended to cause terror. The people of france are not terrified and it was not successful in terrorizing people, but it doesnt mean it is not a terrorist attack, it is just an unsuccessful one.

      • Well, it cannot even cause terror to non journalists. I would accept to call it journalism-targeted terrorism.
        • I am not convinced they only intended to terrorize journalists. If they did, it would indeed be journalism-targeted terrorism.

          • If they had wanted to terrorize random people, they would have shot random people in the streets.
    • by phayes ( 202222 )

      France in a general sense was certainly afraid: Sales figures for the beginning of the post-holiday sales were off by over 30%

      Were we afraid of being personally attacked? No, in general but a few jewish friends certainly were.

      Note that the millions in the streets didn't happen until the terrorists were all identified and dead. I know many people who were iffy about going but firmed up once it was clear that the authors of the killings were dead.

    • It was an attempt to terrorize that backfired BIG time. Not only did thousands hit the street but Charlie Hebdo went from a run of a few thousand to selling over a million copies.

      If it wasn't for the body count, I'm sure a few newspapers wouldn't mind getting "terrorized".

      • Charlie Hebdo went from a run of a few thousand to selling over a million copies.

        The supreme irony is that Charlie Hebdo had financial problems. Without the murders, they would have filled for bankruptcy within a few years. The murderers killed the journalists but saved the newspaper.

  • by WinstonWolfIT ( 1550079 ) on Friday January 16, 2015 @10:23PM (#48836633)

    The crusades are returning, and every attack hardens our defenses. In the end, AK-47s and RPGs are no match for a thousand years of military advances while they neuter themselves with infighting.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      You are just seeing the end of the Marshall Plan.

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

      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 rel

  • I'm going to make a WAG and say that this was shared hosting and some idiot let himself be tricked out of the root password?
    Ahahaha, no, I didn't RTFA.
  • Here's the irony of the situation: the whole idea behind forbidding drawings/sculptures of their prophet is to prevent idolatry. The prohibition of idolatry applies only to Muslims creating/worshiping religious idols. Unless these ISIS guys greatly admired Charlie Hebdo's caricatures, they have no religious justification for what they did. These guys are simply murderers even under their very own Islamic rules.

  • 19,000 is 3 times more than the numbers of websites France ever had

    --
    :-)
  • The French, like many European countries is more liberal than the United States, and as such, was very progressive about allowing Muslims into the country, letting them live and work and worship as they please. As a result of this kindness, they have been beset with increased crime, riots, bombings and now DDOS. 70% of prisoners in France are Muslims. Only 5 to 10% of the population is Muslim. It is pretty obvious that a strong correlation exists between the Muslims in France and the Blacks in the United St

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