The Internet is used by terrorists for several purposes

Jan 31, 2013 14:58 GMT  ·  By

In a recent speech at FIC2013, the French Minister of the Interior Manuel Valls expressed his concern about the cyberattacks launched by jihadists. Ever since the country has become involved in the conflict in Mali, terrorists have been threatening the country and its citizens.

Francois Paget, a senior threat researcher at security firm McAfee, explains that the jihadists heavily rely on the Internet to achieve their goals.

They use the Web for propaganda, and to make threats. In addition, they use online forums – many of which are invitation-only – to communicate with each other, and they utilize social media sites to spread offensive photographs.

They’ve also started launching cyberattacks against French websites.

Paget says that the sites of French socialist deputies have been defaced by hackers who claimed to be jihadists.

Furthermore, they’ve launched distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attacks against several websites, including the one of France’s Ministry of Defense.