Just days before Christmas, a cyberattack forced France’s national postal service offline on Monday, causing delays in parcel deliveries and disrupting online payment systems at one of the busiest times of the year.
The outage frustrated customers and added pressure on postal employees already stretched by the holiday rush. By Monday evening, more than eight hours after the problem began, the disruption had still not been fully resolved.
No group immediately took responsibility for the attack, though speculation circulated among workers and the public. Authorities declined to comment on who might be behind it, while Paris prosecutors opened an investigation.
La Poste described the incident as a “major network failure,” later explaining it was caused by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack that made its online platforms unavailable. The company said customer data was not compromised, but services requiring tracking or access to internal systems were brought to a halt. Standard letter mail, including holiday cards, continued to operate.
The cyberattack also affected La Poste’s banking subsidiary, La Banque Postale. Customers were temporarily unable to use the mobile app to authorize payments or carry out other transactions, prompting the bank to switch to text-message approvals. The bank said teams were working urgently to restore normal operations.
The disruption followed a series of recent cyber incidents in France. Just a week earlier, the Interior Ministry was targeted in a separate attack that resulted in unauthorized access to sensitive files linked to police data. Authorities said human error contributed to that breach, and a suspect was detained.
Prosecutors are also investigating another suspected cyber plot involving software intended to remotely control systems on an international passenger ferry. A Latvian crew member has been arrested on suspicion of acting on behalf of an unidentified foreign power.
France and other European nations supportive of Ukraine have accused Russia of conducting “hybrid warfare,” alleging tactics such as cyberattacks, sabotage, disinformation, and covert operations that are difficult to trace directly back to Moscow.