France’s postal service faced major disruption on Monday after what authorities believe was a cyberattack, knocking several internal systems offline as Christmas deliveries peaked.
La Poste said the incident was linked to a distributed denial-of-service attack that temporarily blocked access to its online services. The company said there was no sign that customer data had been compromised, though mail and parcel deliveries were slowed across the country.
The problems were quickly felt at post offices. In Paris, customers were turned away as staff struggled to process shipments or release packages. Several people waiting in line said they had come to send or collect Christmas gifts, only to learn the systems needed to do so were unavailable.
The outage also affected La Banque Postale. Customers reported being unable to use the mobile app to approve payments or complete routine transactions. The bank later said it had moved payment approvals to text messages as a stopgap.
Both La Poste and the bank said work was underway to restore normal service.
