A group of Romanian hacktivists, who recently defaced two websites associated with The Daily Telegraph as a protest against negative depictions of the Romanian people in the British media, attacked the French newspaper Le Monde over the weekend, citing similar reasons.

On April 14, a previously unknown group of hackers identifying themselves as an outfit called the Romanian National Security (R.N.S.) hijacked two telegraph.co.uk subdomains used for various promotions, and used them to post Romanian nationalist messages. Apparently, the attackers took issue with the jokes from a segment of the popular TV show Top Gear that was shot in Romania last year.

On Sunday, the planete-plus-intelligente.lemonde.fr was defaced with a similar protest message directed at the French media. The subdomain, which normally hosts a partner publication focused on scientific topics, has since been restored. However, a mirror image of the defacement is still available on defacement archive Zone-H.

The new message left behind on the Le Monde website along with the Romanian flag read as follows [approximate translation from Romanian]: "This is not a movement of resistance, a protest or a rebellion! It is the cry of the entire Romanian people calling its brothers, who forgot that Roman blood also flows through our veins. The blood spilled on battlefields so that our people's history can be written is now demanding JUSTICE. The heroes of our nation will never die! We don't want the people who spilled it so that Romania can exist on the world's map to be forgotten. We want to remind our children and our grandchildren of them and to give them the honor they deserve. We've had enough of this ridicule! The gypsies [Roma people] are not Romanians! It's not them who wrote our history! When you refer to our fellow countrymen, stop using expressions such as 'Romanian gypsies.'" Just as with the The Telegraph attack, the hackers ended their statement with a warning: "We respected France, you will respect Romania! R.N.S. WATCHES to make sure this happens."

The R.N.S. might have targeted Le Monde in response to a questionable joke recently made by French humorist Jonathan Lambert during a TV show. The moment, criticized last week in the Romanian media, has Mr. Lambert presenting (video) what he claims to be the Romanian salute, by posing as a beggar, while saying, "S'il vous plait, Messieurs, Mesdames!" [Please, Sirs, Madams].