The websites and apps of France’s national post office and its banking service have been hit by a suspected cyber-attack, disrupting deliveries and hampering online payments and transfers at the busiest time of the year.
Three days before Christmas, La Poste said on Monday that a distributed denial of service incident, or DDoS, had “rendered its online services inaccessible”. Customer data was safe, it said, but mail distribution, including parcels, had been slowed.
French media reported that customers wanting to send last-minute parcels or collect items from post offices were being turned away. The postal service sorts and delivers more than 2m items in the immediate run-up to Christmas.
The group’s banking service, La Banque Postale, said on social media that the incident was “affecting access to online banking and to the mobile app”. Card payments at in-store point-of-sale terminals were still functioning, as were ATMs, it said.
Online payments also remained possible but had to be authenticated via text message, it said. “Our teams are mobilised to resolve the situation quickly,” the bank said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the suspected attack.
The BPCE group, which includes the Banque Populaire and Caisse d’Épargne banks, also experienced an IT malfunction on Monday morning but it was resolved by midday, the company said.
The incident came a week after the French government was targeted by a cyber-attack that disrupted the interior ministry, which is responsible for national security. A 22-year-old suspect had been detained in relation to that incident, French media said.
The interior minister, Laurent Nuñez, said the suspected hacker had extracted several dozen sensitive files and obtained access to data relating to police records and wanted persons. He blamed “imprudence” at the ministry for the incident.
Anonymous hackers boasted of having gained access to nearly 70m confidential data records from various police files in a data breach that they claimed affected 16.4 million French citizens whose details were recorded in numerous state databases.
Private companies including the mobile operator SFR and DIY chain Leroy Merlin have also been the victims of attacks in recent weeks.
Prosecutors said last week that France’s counterespionage agency was investigating a suspected cyber-attack plot involving software that would have allowed remote users to control the 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, including cyber-attacks.
