Two subdomains of The Daily Telegraph’s website have been defaced by Romanian hackers.

A gang calling itself the The Romanian National Security Group (RNS) claimed the attack, complaining about allegedly offensive remarks made on Top Gear that branded Romanians ‘gypsies’. Co-presenter James May is a columnist for the newspaper.

A message scrawled in Romanian on the sites loosely translates as: “We are tired of seeing how some 'garbage' like you try to mock our country and you create a completely different picture [of us] compared to the real one, calling us 'Romanian Gypsies' and broadcasting shi**y shows like Top Gear. If you have the nerve to anger an entire country, know that we will not stop in Romania.”

A sentence written in English concludes the message, saying “guess what, gypsies aren't Romanians, morons”. The script includes a link to the infringing Top Gear episode on Romanian YouTube – labelled the “attack on Romanians” and displays another message against the show complaining about the presenters’ remarks.

A screenshot of the image was put on Sunbelt Software’s blog, which found the images displayed on shortbreaks.telegraph.co.uk and wine-and-dine.telegraph.co.uk/site/index.php.

Both sites have been temporarily taken down and The Daily Telegraph was unavailable for comment at the time of publication.

Incidentally, the Romany people – often referred to as gypsies – don't originate from Romania, but are thought to come from either central Asia or the Indian subcontinent.