The Cyber-Caliphate hacks 54,000 Twitter accounts
The ISIS propaganda machine has a dual role, publicity and recruitment; its noise level had been curtailed with the killing of British hacker and ISIS member Junaid Hussain. He had played a key role in setting up and running an ISIS hacking group called the Cyber Caliphate, that claimed a number of spectacular hacks, particularly focusing on Twitter sites. This weekend the group sprang back to life with news that it had hacked over 50,000 Twitter accounts, primarily in Saudi Arabia, but also of key personnel within the FBI and the CIA. The extent of the group's abilities are not clear: having claimed responsibility for the TV5 Monde hack last June, it later transpired that this had been the work of the state-sponsored Russian APT28 group.

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The devastating “jihadist” cyber-attack which crippled a French television station in April may actually have been the work of sophisticated hackers with links to the Kremlin, French authorities believe.

The invasion of the computers of TV5Monde was claimed by “CyberCaliphate” on behalf of Isis.

French judicial sources said that the “the investigations are at this stage looking towards a group of Russian hackers designated by the name APT28.”

The group, also nick-named “Pawn Storm”, has previously tried to hack into the computers of the White House and those of several Nato governments. It has targeted Russian dissidents and pro-Ukrainian activists.

US authorities suggest that this pattern of activities, and the sophistication of the attacks, implies – without proving – a link with the Russian government.

The television station's social network profiles were altered during the cyber attack

The attack on TV5Monde, an international Francophone network, knocked the station’s 12 channels off the air for 18 hours on 8 April. An unknown group called CyberCaliphate replaced broadcasts with a black screen and broadcast jihadist propaganda messages on the station’s website and Facebook and Twitter accounts. At the time, the French government spoke of a “terrorist attack”. TV5Monde, which reaches homes in 200 countries, was forced to broadcast old programmes. Its president, Yves Bigot, said that the cyber-assault was “unprecedented in the history of television”.

An investigation by the French news magazine L’Express has claimed French authorities now believed that the attack came through Brazil but originated in Russia. This was confimed by judicial sources talking to the French news agency, Agence France Presse.

L’Express said it had obtained a copy of a confidential report by the French governmnet’s cyber-security agency, L’Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d’information (ANSSI).

The agency’s 15 investigators found that the hackers had painstaking prepared their ground by gradually penetrating the furthest reaches of TV5Monde’s computer systems from January.

Although sent through computer addresses in Brazil, American cyber-security experts told L’Express that the codes used by the group were typed on a keyboard which corresponded with the Russian Cyrillic alphabet and always during office hours in Moscow.

Relations between France and Russia have taken a sharp downward turn since President François Hollande’s decision last year to cancel the delivery of two large warships to Russia as part of western sanctions against Moscow.