France’s national postal service, La Poste, and its banking subsidiary were hit by a major network disruption on Monday following a suspected cyberattack. The outage occurred during the peak holiday season, causing significant delays for citizens attempting to send Christmas parcels and access financial services.
Impact on Services
The incident brought down the company’s primary website and disabled several digital platforms, including the La Poste mobile app, Digiposte, and the Digital Identity service. La Banque Postale also confirmed that its online and mobile banking portals were unreachable.
Despite the digital blackout, the company maintained that physical post offices remained open for essential counter transactions. La Banque Postale clarified that core financial operations remained functional, allowing customers to:
- Withdraw cash from ATMs.
- Make in-store card payments.
- Use WERO for transfers.
- Process interbank transfers and standard financial flows.
Nature of the Attack
Preliminary reports suggest the disruption was the result of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. While the surge in traffic succeeded in knocking services offline and slowing mail delivery, La Poste emphasized that there is currently no evidence that any customer data was compromised. No specific group has yet claimed responsibility for the disruption.
Broader Context of French Cyber Threats
This incident follows a recent confirmed breach at the French Ministry of the Interior. That attack was framed by hackers as an act of retaliation for the arrest of members associated with the "ShinyHunters" cybercrime group. In connection with that earlier breach, French authorities recently took a 22 year old into custody.
La Poste teams are currently working to restore full connectivity to their online infrastructure.
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