Just before Christmas, a massive digital tidal wave has knocked France’s national postal service and its banking arm sideways, leaving millions of people scrambling to track gifts and manage their holiday spending.
France’s national postal operator, La Poste, confirmed on Monday (Dec. 22) that a cyber incident knocked large parts of its IT systems offline, disrupting postal deliveries and cutting access to key online and mobile services across the country.
In a message posted on Facebook, La Poste described the situation as “a major network incident” that affected all of its information systems. The disruption hit at one of the busiest times of the year, with millions of people relying on the service for Christmas parcels, banking, and official documents.
According to La Poste, several widely used digital platforms became temporarily unavailable, including La Poste’s main website and mobile application, La Banque Postale online and mobile banking, Digiposte, and La Poste Digital Identity services.
Suspected DDoS attack
French media outlet Le Monde reported that the disruption was caused by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack.
According to Le Monde, La Poste later confirmed that its online services had been rendered unavailable by such an incident. The company said there was no impact on customer data, but acknowledged that package and mail deliveries were impacted. La Poste handles billions of parcels and letters each year and employs more than 200,000 people, making the disruption widely felt across the country.
A tense moment for French cybersecurity
This isn’t an isolated incident for France. The country has been under a barrage of cyber-activity lately. Just last week, the Interior Ministry was breached, leading to the arrest of a 22-year-old suspect.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez has previously pointed toward “foreign interference,” often hinting at Russian “hybrid warfare” in retaliation for France’s support of Ukraine, though no official blame has been pinned for this specific postal attack yet.
Recovery efforts ongoing
As of Wednesday morning (Dec. 24, 00:05 CET), the systems remained largely offline. La Poste has not given a clear timeline for a full return to normal services. The company stated that its technical teams were working around the clock to bring systems back online and restore operations to normal.
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