Paris (AFP)

Several dozen small French websites have been affected by a wave of computer hacks consisting in making them post Islamist propaganda messages, AFP noted on Monday.

Messages such as "Victory for Mohammed, victory for Islam and Death to France" and a montage depicting Emmanuel Macron dressed as a pig were displayed instead of the home page of retiree association sites, shops or small town halls.

Other sites displayed in green letters the message "Operation launched by Muslim hackers against France for insulting the Prophet Muhammad and publicly profaning Islam".

Contacted Monday by AFP, a police source was "not aware of a complaint", "but it is probably only a matter of time," she said.

The national device for assistance to victims of cybermalveillance had launched the alert the day before on Twitter, indicating that a "wave of disfiguring cyberattacks" targeted "many French sites".

"The traffic exploded Sunday evening on our platform" (cybermalveillance.gouv.fr) which gives advice to the victims of this type of acts, declared Monday to AFP its general manager Jérôme Notin.

Website editors can in particular protect themselves against these attacks by performing technical updates to their website.

"Several dozen websites, perhaps a hundred, have been affected," said Gérôme Billois, cybersecurity specialist at Wavestone, interviewed by AFP.

"It is targeted on a clear political message," he noted, recalling a wave of similar attacks that affected more than 1,000 French sites after the January 2015 attacks.

These low-level defacement attacks are carried out automatically via software that detects and exploits flaws in servers and websites.

"What the attackers are looking for is to reach a lot of sites so that we can start talking about them," said Billois.

"This slight peak of disfigurement should be put into perspective," said the National Information Systems Security Agency (Anssi).

"This phenomenon often takes place in the context of sensitive political or societal news. It is a type of unsophisticated attack which only aims to destabilize public opinion", she added in a statement to AFP.

The weekend was marked by protests and calls to boycott French products in the Muslim world, following recent remarks about Islam by Emmanuel Macron.

The French president had notably promised Wednesday that France would continue to defend the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, during the tribute ceremony to Samuel Paty, a professor beheaded in an Islamist attack for showing these drawings in class.

© 2020 AFP