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

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.