Air France‘s National Personal Mutual (MNPAF) was hacked on Sunday for a brief time period, confirmed the airline’s spokesperson.
The site’s homepage was temporarily replaced by a black and red screen that displayed a message regarding avenging the “Mujahideen of Algeria blood.”
Mujahideen is a term used in Algeria to refer to the war of independence veterans.
The page displayed the message: “We represent our Martyrs and our Mujahideen. We will not forget your crimes of the 8 May 1945. We will not stop hacking French web servers.”
A full preview of the deface page uploaded by hackers is available below:
On 8 May 1945, local protests demonstrations were fired upon by French police. The incident was later labelled as the Setif and Guelma massacres.
Contrary to the French Police’s claims that 1,020 Algerians were killed, foreign observers from numerous locations reported that more than 45,000 locals were perished.
The airline’s spokesperson explained that the site’s homepage only has been targeted. He said “the site was the victim of defacing on its home page.”
“We realised this in the afternoon (Sunday) and asked the French Network and Information Security Agency to take the website down, which has since been restored.”
MNPAF web host is an “an external service provider to the company” and the airline has asked it to initiate investigation.