After January terrorist attacks in France by gunmen claiming links to IS and al Qaida in Yemen, officials said hackers had targeted some 19,000 French websites. William Reymond, editor of the French investigative website Breaking3zero, which traced the January hackings, said the latest attack can be directly linked to two IS-linked militants - one in Algeria who built the malicious software and another in Iraq who helped speed up the attack.
Within half an hour, he said, the malware had burrowed in and exploited a weakness to enter the network's computer system and take over its central transmission server, which translates an analogue signal into a digital one before it is beamed to a satellite. He said TV5 Monde will have a hard time regaining full control.
"They have to erase everything. There were at least three other encrypted viruses," he said.
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