Hackers have now hit 19,000 French websites

A sort of pro-Islamist image French websites display after a hack attack [PHOTO: Courtesy]

France has endured a record number of cyberattacks in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo killings, the country's digital defence chief has announced.

Arnaud Coustilliere, head of cyber-defence for the French military, said some 19,000 websites have been hit in the past few days.

The attacks were carried out by "more or less structured" groups including well-known Islamist organisations.

Most of the hacks involved defacing websites to show propaganda images or "Death to Charlie" slogans.

"What's new, what's important, is that this is 19,000 sites — that's never been seen before," Coustilliere said.

He said this was "first time that a country has been faced with such a large wave" of online attacks.

The hacktivist group Anonymous has launched its own war against jihadi hackers, targeting pro-jihad websites and social media accounts.

But it appears to have been unable to match the scale of the digital blitzkrieg its Islamist enemies have launched against France.

The digital security firm Arbor Networks has recorded 1,070 denial of service attacks in the past 24 hours.

These attacks are commonly used to bring down websites by overloading them with traffic.