Cyberattack Disrupts France’s Postal Service and Banking During Christmas Rush

A cyberattack knocked France’s national postal service offline, blocking and delaying package deliveries and online payments, during the height of the Christmas rush. The incident, described as a distributed denial of service attack, rendered La Poste’s online services inaccessible but had no reported impact on customer data, and letters could still be mailed and delivered.

The disruption also affected La Banque Postale, with customers unable to approve payments online and bank staff redirecting approvals to text messages. Officials described it as a major network incident, and Paris prosecutors were examining the case, with no immediate claim of responsibility though suspicions ranged from Russia to a disgruntled individual.

The postal group noted it had delivered 2.6 billion packages last year and employs more than 200,000 people; the outage lasted more than eight hours after first being reported. According to Associated Press.