Cyberattack disrupts France’s postal service and banking during Christmas rush

PARIS (AP) — A suspected cyberattack knocked France’s national postal service and its banking arm offline Monday, blocking and delaying package deliveries and online payments at the height of the busy Christmas season.

The postal service, called La Poste, said in a statement that a distributed denial of service incident, or DDoS, “rendered its online services inaccessible.” It said the incident had no impact on customer data, but disrupted package and mail delivery.

At a Paris post office decked out in holiday garlands and usually bustling this time of year, employees turned away frustrated customers lining up to send or retrieve packages, including Christmas gifts.

Customers of the company’s banking arm, La Banque Postale, were blocked from using the application to approve payments or conduct other banking services. The bank redirected approvals to text messages instead.

“Our teams are mobilized to resolve the situation quickly,” the bank said in messages posted on social networks.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

It came a week after France’s government was targeted by a cyberattack that disrupted the Interior Ministry, in charge of national security.

In that incident, a suspected hacker extracted a few dozen sensitive files and obtained access to data relating to police records and wanted persons, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said on broadcaster France-Info. He blamed “imprudence” at the ministry for the incident. French media reported that a 22-year-old was detained.

Also last week, prosecutors said that France’s counterespionage agency is investigating a suspected cyberattack plot involving software that would have allowed remote users to control computer systems of an international passenger ferry. A Latvian crew member is in custody facing charges of having acted for an unidentified foreign power, officials said.

France and other European allies of Ukraine allege that Russia is waging “hybrid warfare” against them, using sabotage, assassinations, cyberattacks, disinformation and other hostile acts that are often hard to quickly trace back to Moscow.